It has been a rough start for the Affordable Care Act as the online health insurance exchanges where people can purchase their mandatory coverage continues to suffer from computer glitches and crashes for a third day in a row, according to Bloomberg.
Americans that are not covered by Medicare and who don't receive health coverage through work will need to purchase insurance through the exchanges by the Jan. 1, 2014 or they will be subject to a fine. The exchanges opened on Tuesday and have been plagued by computer errors since hours into their launch.
The glitches are a bit of a mixed bag for the Obama administration; it is a positive sign that the exchanges have been flooded with users because it shows that there is high interest in the program but if the problems continue they could become a talking point for Republicans who oppose the law, according to the Associated Press.
Bill Curtis, chief scientist at software quality analysis firm CAST, told the Associated Press that the difficulties the exchanges have experienced are indicative of programmers rushing to meet a deadline.
"When you are in a rush, you typically make a lot of mistakes and you don't have time to test them all out," Curtis said.
The federal exchange, healthcare.gov, was still experiencing some difficulties and would not allow some people to sign up as of Thursday morning. State run exchanges in California and Maryland crashed earlier in the week but were up and running smoothly on Thursday, according to Bloomberg.
President Barack Obama tried to ease people's concerns by comparing the difficulties healthcare.gov had been experiencing to the trouble Apple had launching a new operating system recently, according to NBC News.
"I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones of iPads - or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't," President Obama said. "That's not how we do things in America. We don't actually root for failure."
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., attacked the Obama administration for having ample time to prepare the exchanges and still failing to get things working smoothly, according to NBC News.
"[People on healthcare.gov are] being met with crashing websites, missing price information, confusing forms and in some cases, exchanges that had to delay their start date because they aren't ready yet," Issa said. "These 'glitches,' which the President is trying to brush off, reveal how totally unprepared the government is for this launch even with three and a half years to prepare."
