Obama Compares Health-Care Enrollment Glitches to Apple iOS 7 Bugs President Obama dismissed technical problems with the new health-care exchanges and said they would be fixed. But consumers are finding it hard to sign up for coverage.
By Brian Patrick Eha •
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In his address to the nation today regarding the government shutdown that went into effect at midnight as well as today's glitch-plagued launch of the Affordable Care Act health-care exchanges, President Barack Obama was clear: He would not negotiate over his signature health-care law.
Today was the first day that Americans could enroll in the new health-care exchanges, but technical glitches and delays on Healthcare.gov, the enrollment site, complicated the launch and reportedly left some people unable to enroll at all.
Characterizing the glitches as scarcely more than Healthcare.gov "running more slowly than it normally will," Obama said the issues would be resolved. He compared the technical problems with the exchanges to bugs in Apple's latest mobile operating system. "I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't," he said.
"That's not how we do things in America," the President added. "We don't actively root for failure. We get to work, we make things happen, we make them better, we keep going."
Visitors to Healthcare.gov reported a range of errors. Many received a "Please wait" message after selecting the state in which they wanted to enroll. "We have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we're working to make your experience here better," the message reads. "Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience!"
David Simas, a White House communications advisor, tweeted this morning that Healthcare.gov had received one million visits in the preceding 24 hours.
1 million visit http://t.co/v1f3Ukk4lz in last day. 5x more users than ever on http://t.co/4fTvbIikCg at once. Millions want to #GetCovered
— David Simas (@Simas44) October 1, 2013
