Obamacare sign-up closes at midnight and enrollment is surging, but a technical flare-up on HealthCare.gov Monday morning marred the administration’s momentum.
The online portal, which had been handling millions of visitors over the past few days as enrollment pushed past 6 million, was “down for maintenance” starting at around 3:20 a.m. Officials said it returned to functionality at 9 a.m.
Health and Human Services officials said the problem was a software bug discovered overnight that was being repaired. The site goes through routine maintenance at night, but this incident spilled into high-profile hours on the final day for most people to enroll in Obamacare. More than 2 million people went to the site over the weekend.
A spokesman said Monday morning that consumers were asked to leave their email during the five-hour offline gap so that they could “be invited back” when the system returned.
