Note: An earlier version of this post misattributed which companies were serving as system integrators in each state. We apologize for the error.
Paige Baschuk, Hanna Jaquith, and Dan Diamond, Daily Briefing
Although officials warned that Tuesday's launch of the Affordable Care Act's new health insurance exchanges would be bumpy, the surprising surge of interest—and Web traffic—exceeded their expectations.
Don't judge the exchanges' fate too soon: Join us for a conversation on November 15 as our experts perform a pulse check on Obamacare.
CMS officials said that healthcare.gov received nearly 3 million visits across the morning and afternoon, and some states like California and New York saw significantly more traffic on their own state websites. And that's the chief reason why, they said, many exchange websites were having trouble accepting enrollees and fielding other requests.
According to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, the heavy traffic was a positive indicator that consumers are excited by the new exchanges and eager to obtain health insurance. However, Tavenner and other federal officials repeatedly declined to give an update on how many Americans have enrolled in coverage through the exchanges thusfar.
Our team has been tracking website readiness since yesterday morning, and as of Wednesday afternoon, a growing number of exchanges were working ... but long load times and other site errors persisted. As a result, most websites didn't appear to be fully functional.
Here's the Daily Briefing's rolling look at which exchange websites are still having glitches, as of Oct. 4, 2:30 p.m. ET.
