Photos: Colorado Obamacare exchange glitchy, but still better than many federal sites

Have you visited Connect for Health Colorado, the state's insurance exchange, on the first day of shopping for Obamacare? If so, you may have seen an error message like this one. But even when the site slows or glitches, it's still working better than a lot of federal websites, which...

By Michael Roberts

October 1, 2013

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Have you visited Connect for Health Colorado, the state's insurance exchange, on the first day of shopping for Obamacare? If so, you may have seen an error message like this one. But even when the site slows or glitches, it's still working better than a lot of federal websites, which are not operating at all thanks to the partial federal shutdown that went into effect at midnight.

Connect for Health Colorado was ready to hit the ground running today, as indicated by the following tweet:

Connect for Health Colorado is open for business pic.twitter.com/ozwTgPT8kF
— C4HCO (@C4HCO) October 1, 2013

Still, there have been some problems, as acknowledged in this subsequent message:

To ensure a smooth shopping process, we are temporarily turning off the create account function to resolve some error messages.
— C4HCO (@C4HCO) October 1, 2013

But the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative found old-fashioned communication worked just fine:

Kudos to the @C4HCO call center; on hold less than 20 secs before they answered our questions #cohealth
— CCHI Policy Updates (@cchipolicy) October 1, 2013

As for Andrew Villegas, assistant editor of Kaiser Health News, he noted via Twitter that he was able to compare rates on the website, but occasionally triggered the aforementioned error message; he tweeted the image above. Not that Colorado's exchange was the only one with problems, as he noted in another tweet:

We @KHNews are seeing many error messages on #Obamacare insurance exchange websites so far this morning. "Expect glitches" message right.
— Andrew Villegas (@ReporterAndrew) October 1, 2013

Then again, there's at least hope of getting something to work, unlike anyone who visits the National Park Service site. Drop by and this is what you'll see:

Guess instead of visiting a natural wonder, you can shop for insurance.

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Michael Roberts began his career with Westword in 1990 as music editor. In 1999, he took on a new role, full-time media reporter, as author of a column called The Message. In 2008, he became the lead writer for Westword's news blog, The Latest Word, a position he held until January 2023. Michael continues to freelance for Westword, covering everything from business to sports and the media; he also contributes to Jazziz, a national music magazine. He holds a bachelor's degree from what is now Colorado Mesa University and master's degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Northwestern University.

Contact: Michael Roberts

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