Website glitches and long wait times tripped up many shoppers in their last-minute sprint to buy health insurance this weekend through HealthCare.gov before Sunday's deadline, enrollment workers and federal officials said.
Because of this, the Obama administration announced Monday that it would allow a special enrollment period for applicants who were unable to complete their enrollment because of the holdups.
The special enrollment period began Monday and ends Sunday, Feb. 22, and applies to people who began the application process but were unable to finish it because of the technical setbacks.
The problems with the site stemmed from a Saturday outage of an Internal Revenue Service function, which is supposed to verify applicants' income.
"We were not able to get any applications through at all on Saturday until around 7 or 8 p.m.," explained Andrew Hetzler, chief operating officer of American Exchange, a Chattanooga-based broker that specializes in marketplace coverage.
But Hetzler said the problem appeared to be remedied by Sunday, which is when federal officials announced the function had been fixed.
It was unclear whether the glitches were a result of a bottleneck as last-minute shoppers surged to the site to meet the deadline. Jacob Flowers, Tennessee state director of Get Covered America, an arm of Enroll America, said "it was a very busy weekend" for enrollment.
"We saw big turnouts at all the enrollment events we're monitoring across the state," Flowers said.
Local navigators say they were swamped the entire week leading up to the deadline.
"We had to put a voice message on our phones telling people we were no longer taking appointments," said Nancy Ridge, a navigator with the Chattanooga Medical Foundation.
Before the weekend, HealthCare.gov had been functioning smoothly -- especially in comparison with the site's botched launch last year. After that ordeal, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services resorted to a two-week extension at the end of open enrollment.
Navigators and brokers, many of whom took Monday off after working long hours over the weekend, say they are trying to take advantage of this new window.
"We will absolutely take more appointments as long as people are able to enroll," Ridge said.
Contact staff writer Kate Belz at kbelz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.