Americans who couldn’t enroll in federal Obamacare insurance plans over the weekend because of computer glitches or long waits will now have until next Sunday to sign up, federal officials announced early Monday.
“We are pleased that the vast majority of consumers were able to apply and pick a plan through HealthCare.gov or its call center without a problem,” said Aaron Albright, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“For those consumers who were unable to complete their enrollment because of longer than normal wait times at the call center in the last three days or because of a technical issue such as being unable to submit an application because their income could not be verified, we will provide them with a time-limited special enrollment period for March 1 coverage.”
The special enrollment period begins Monday and ends Feb. 22.
The extension was prompted by the Saturday outage of an Internal Revenue Service function for Obamacare enrollment, which could have prevented about 500,000 people from enrolling. The glitch prevented some people from getting their income verified so they could enroll on HealthCare.gov and at least some state exchanges by the Sunday deadline.
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Jeffrey R. Ungvary President