Washington’s poster-child health exchange has glitch-filled opening weekend

It was a bumpy opening weekend for the Washington state health insurance exchange where people buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

770 KTTH host David Boze says the poor showing this weekend doesn’t just look bad for the health care exchange in Washington: “Remember we’re the poster child for the entire nation, so when we have a glitch…”

The Healthplanfinder website went down after the open enrollment period began Saturday because of a problem involving tax credit calculations.

Boze pities the people who got caught in that mess and says from what he’s heard, it might not be so easy for people to resolve.

“You can imagine if you signed up for a plan thinking, ‘hey, I’m going to get a great subsidy here’ and it turned out you didn’t. Good luck getting that switch made,” says Boze. “I’ve had some people email me and we’ve talked to folks on the show that have tried to do changes before and it’s not necessarily as easy as one might hope. It can be quite challenging.”

The website came back online Sunday only to go down again for what the website called scheduled maintenance. Boze questions why such maintenance would be scheduled for the opening weekend of the open enrollment period.

“I would probably have that upkeep done prior to the open enrollment period,” says Boze. “But that’s not the way it works. Shut it down when people are trying to use it. It’s all about the customer service.”

The site was back Monday morning, although it missed a promised 4 a.m. startup.

The open enrollment period continues through Feb. 15. Officials hope the 145,000 people who bought insurance through the program last year renew and that as many as 85,000 more sign up.

People who do not buy insurance will be fined through their income taxes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.