Sarah Kliff reports that Obamacare websites are getting pretty high traffic in their first few hours of business. The New York Times confirms this: “Heavy volume contributed to technical problems and delays that plagued the rollout Tuesday of the online insurance markets at the heart of President Obama’s health care law, according to state and federal governments, with officials watching closely for clues to how well the system will work and how many people will take advantage of it.”
Probably nobody is interested in my advice, but here it is anyway: Wait a week. Wait two weeks! Any insurance you buy on an exchange won’t start until January 1, so there’s really no point in being a guinea pig while everyone is still trying to work out the opening-day glitches in their systems.
I checked the California site this morning just to see how it was working, and it seemed OK. A little slow, and there were a couple of UI choices I wouldn’t have made, but it was basically responsive and fine. Still, the hassle factor will be lower once the web traffic eases, the sites are tweaked, phone traffic dies down a bit, and everyone has a few days of experience under their belts. So you might as well wait a bit.
