Visits to healthcare.gov on Monday spiked to a record high as consumers scrambled to make the deadline for health coverage starting Jan 1.
By Monday at 2 p.m., healthcare.gov had approximately 850,000 visits — five times the number of visits by the same time on the previous Monday. These high numbers also follow a weekend that experienced more than 1.2 million site visits.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent out a release Monday, saying the system is handling the record number of consumers on the site as well. The overall error rate averages less than 0.4 percent and quick response times average less than a second, despite increased traffic, according to CMS.
The site deployed its queuing system after it reached 60,000 simultaneous users, just before 11 a.m.
“These decisions are being made in real time, based on site metrics and Web traffic,” Julie Bataille, director of CMS’ communications office, said in a release. “Consumers can either wait or submit their email to be invited back to the front of the line to find affordable health coverage. So far today, more than 60,000 consumers have provided an email address to get their invitation to return later.”
This deadline signifies the open enrollment period has reached its halfway point. Consumers still have until March 31, 2014 to sign up under open enrollment; however, the last day to get coverage beginning Jan. 1 is Dec. 23.
