Washington State Not Only Healthcare Exchange to Go Haywire, Shutdown

Less than 12 hours after healthcare exchange officials across the country gleefully kicked off the latest open enrollment for this year's round of Obamacare,  healthcare exchange sites across the country began crashing faster than a helium balloon at a dart tournament.

Not only did Washington's healthcare exchange crash Saturday,  but so did healthcare websites in Virginia, Louisiana, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, Kentucky,  Colorado and other states.

Washington state's issue came from 2015 tax credits being incorrectly calculated for customers.  The site finally came back up later in the weekend, and as of Monday, was working.  We went there and checked.

Some of the problems encountered included :

• Error messages that prevented clients from accessing accounts
• Invalid password alerts occurring just after clients had enrolled
• Clients who tried to log back into account after enrolling were locked out of their own accounts.
• Incorrect calculations of tax credits for 2015 caused other sites to close over the weekend.

The reason for the rush by some to enroll on the first day of open Obamacare enrollment is because starting next year,  IRS penalties increase for those who don't currently have some sort of healthcare.

While healthcare officials are painting a rosy picture of thousands of people visiting sites and enrolling,  they fail to point out the vast majority in our state - and nationwide - enrolled in some sort of low-income based   low-cost program.   Over 65% of the Obamacare enrollees will get low-cost or free programs, which will be entirely funded by taxpayers.

HOWEVER, like we saw last year,  the number of people buying higher coverage, more expensive programs are way behind projected figures.  This is how Obamacare was supposed to pay for itself.  The fees paid by the higher end programs would offset all the free, low income programs but it's not working out that way.