New Obamacare website 'fix' CRASHES just as White House boasts of its success

  • Government programmers designed a 'queueing' feature to help avoid system crashes, emailing users to return when traffic levels are lower
  • That new add-on, too, crashed on Monday while President Obama's chief spokesman was boasting that it would 'improve the user experience'
  • Between midnight and noon on Monday, 375,000 people visited healthcare.gov – a fraction of whom actually purchased medical insurance
  • Amazon.com expects to complete 13 million online sales on Cyber Monday

By David Martosko, U.s. Political Editor

PUBLISHED: 15:42 EST, 2 December 2013 | UPDATED: 18:54 EST, 2 December 2013

The flagship Obamacare website continued to spout error messages on Monday, hobbling a new fix that the White House bragged would avoid system crashes caused by too much Web traffic.

Frustrated with news reports about crashes, delays and other online failures, the Obama administration's 'tech surge' team put in place an email-driven 'queuing system' similar to the overdraft feature available with some checking accounts.

When the site's traffic exceeds its capacity, subsequent users see a message asking for their email addresses.

'Can't wait?' the message reads. 'Leave your email with us, and we'll send you a one-time message when HealthCare.gov is ready for you to return.'

This page, too, was prone to crash on Monday, at the very moment White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was boasting about it to reporters.

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Uh-oh: While the federal government touts upgrades to the Obamacare website, consumers are seeing a new raft of error messages -- even when they choose to enter a virtual waiting room for enrollment

Uh-oh: While the federal government touts upgrades to the Obamacare website, consumers are seeing a new raft of error messages -- even when they choose to enter a virtual waiting room for enrollment

MailOnline provided healthcare.gov with six different email addresses from six different locations in New York City and Washington, D.C. In five cases, a new error message appeared.

'Sorry, there was an error!' it read. 'Please reload and try again later.'

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday during a conference call with reporters that the queueing system was put in place at 10:00 Monday morning.

During his daily press briefing on Monday, Carney cautioned reporters to draw a distinction between error messages and the queueing system – which he styled as a life-saving feature, not a bug unto itself.

 

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Americans, said Fox News correspondent Ed Henry, 'are still getting the same error messages they got three weeks ago.'

Not so, said Carney.

'I think you're confusing error messages with the queueing message, which is quite a different thing entirely,' he claimed.

'The queuing system,' Carney had said earlier in the briefing, 'is a feature designed to improve the user experience.' 

White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted that the 'queueing feature' -- a sort of overdraft protection for website registrations -- was a helpful new feature, but it crashed whiel he was praising its virtues

White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted that the 'queueing feature' -- a sort of overdraft protection for website registrations -- was a helpful new feature, but it crashed whiel he was praising its virtues

He told reporters that through 12:00 noon, healthcare.gov had been visited 375,000 times since midnight Monday.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has said that it hoped to have the capacity to serve as many as 800,000 visitors per day.

Only a fraction of those visitors are expected to create healthcare.gov accounts, apply for coverage, or actually purchase insurance policies.

Carney's remarks, and the latest round of website failures, came on Cyber Monday, an unofficial shopping holiday when Amazon.com expected to sell 27 million items to 13 million customers.

He also reinforced the White House's earlier promises, going back to early in 2010, that President Obama himself would sign up for Affordable Care Act coverage.

'He will,' Carney confirmed.

The move would be largely symbolic, however, since a private staff of military doctors cares for the Obama family.



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As any web designer knows...the rule is this:......"Junk in...Junk out!"

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incompetent idiots ...

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FAIL

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Obama will say " it's Bush's Fault"! Can't use that one anymore can you - Obama the Communist liar!

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Carney is a hack.

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jay "goebbels" carney said what? Oh - right - all is well - everything is beautiful - obama is great.

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Jay Carny proclaims that s--t don't stink. You believe him?

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Just stop trying to fix it, it's a lost cause.

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I was not surprised at another Obama fail. I won't even be surprised when they blame others for it. They will even blame others for the fact they had to blame others. Vicious cycle it is.

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This whole mess is a complete failure, like the people who voted for it!

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