Washington state health insurance website shuts down after errors

Washington state’s health insurance website was taken offline Saturday morning after errors, but is back online on Sunday.

Saturday was the first day of open enrollment for 2015 health insurance, but the website was shut down
because tax credit amounts were being incorrectly calculated.

Richard Onizuka, CEO for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, issued the following statement:

“Washington Healthplanfinder continues to be unavailable today (Saturday) to provide a resolution for incorrect eligibility results for 2015 health insurance premium tax credit amounts that appeared in the first few hours of open enrollment. Our staff worked diligently with our system partners from the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) over the past several hours to identify and implement a fix for this issue, which is expected to be resolved during scheduled maintenance this (Saturday) evening.

Washington Healthplanfinder expects to be back online tomorrow, Nov. 16 starting at 8:00 a.m. While it was disappointing to identify this error and take the system offline, we were able to quickly identify the root cause of the issue and prevent a large number of applications from being affected.

Thank you for your patience as we work to ensure that our customers receive accurate information during the Washington Healthplanfinder application process.”