Washington health exchange website down for over a day
Oct 31, 2013, 5:50 AM | Updated: 11:31 am
You probably didn’t have good luck if you tried to sign up for the new Washington Health Benefit Exchange between Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning.
For the second time this week, the wahealthplanfinder.org was out of order.
It went down at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and at the time, there wasn’t an estimate for when service would be restored.
The site was also down for several hours on Sunday.
The state is blaming both outages on problems with the federal government’s data system, which helps determine eligibility and tax credits.
The site was restored on Thursday at 8 a.m.
Nearly 50,000 residents in Washington state have signed up for insurance since open enrollment started earlier this month.
Officials with the Washington Health Benefit Exchange said Monday that of the 48,995 enrollments recorded as of last Friday, more than 6,300 were for health plans certified by the state, and the remaining were those enrolling for Medicaid coverage.
An additional 52,723 residents have completed online applications that are awaiting payment that is due in December.
Washington residents have six months to buy health insurance through the new exchange during the first enrollment period ending in March.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
