Your Obamacare Account…Is Unavailable
For shits and giggles, I thought I'd try my luck at applying for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act through the new exchanges that launched today. As an Arizona resident, this means a federally run exchange accessible via Healthcare.gov. I clicked "Apply Now," chose "Individuals & Families" and selected my state. After that, it proceeded bureaucratically, but functionally, enough, until I hit the page where you select your security questions for your account, and assign answers—a standard enough procedure, these days, on sites that deal with sensitive information. Except…The site didn't give me any choices for my security questions. There were pull-down menus from which to choose three question, but they didn't do a damned thing.
Click! Click! Click! Nothing. Hmmm…That's awkward.
So, I filled in three answers, anyway, and tapped "create account." Then I waited. And waited a bit more… And I received an error message: "Important: Your account couldnt be created at this time. The system is unavailable." (Missing apostrophe in the original.)
I suspect that "the system is unavailable" will sum things up rather nicely, Obamacare-wise, in the days and weeks to come.