Obamacare: Washington Healthplanfinder Shuts Down Site Due to Glitch

Nov 15, 2014 11:21 PM EST

(Photo : REUTERS/Larry Downing) Protesters rally at the steps of the Supreme Court as arguments begin today to challenge the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers provide coverage for contraception as part of an employee's health care.

The U.S. federal government quietly relaunched Obamacare on Saturday and it appears the roll out to extend private health coverage to millions of uninsured American went smoothly as online insurers started to accept enrollees for 2015. However, a few states reported some problems, and Washington state was one of them.

Like Us on Facebook

The culprit is the tax credit calculations at Washington Healthplanfinder which were inaccurate by a few dollars in some cases. The health care exchange, which opened without any hitches at 8 a.m, was forced to shutter the entire system at about 10:30 a.m. and the website remains close, reports ABC News.

Richard Onizuka, CEO of Washington Healthplanfinder, estimated that the earliest the portal would resume operations is on Sunday morning to give the company's software experts time to fix the glitch and test it for possible side effects.

Since the exchange opened on Saturday morning, about 2,000 people were using it per hour, said Michael Marchand, the company's spokesman. That would mean around 5,000 had been using the exchange until the problem was reported and the online insurer temporarily closed the site.

Marchand, who explained that company officials opted to close the portal rather than fix the problems later because previous experienced told them it is difficult to correct the issue post-registration, said, "It's really bittersweet ... The site worked so much better than last year."

Uninsured Washington residents have until February 15, 2015, to enroll for health care insurance. The health insurers in the state are aiming to have up to 85,000 Washington residents sign up for the 2015 season and hope the 145,000 who purchased health policies at the first open enrollment period will renew for another 12 months.

Besides Washington and 13 other states which reported mistakes in computation of federal subsidy, the relaunch of Obamacare went smoothly compared to massive technical problems during the first roll out in 2013 that led to a campaign by the Republicans to repeal the Obama signature health care program.