BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Unexpectedly heavy first-day traffic strained the website New York set up for residents to shop for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, health officials said Tuesday as technicians worked on glitches that prevented some consumers from getting past the home page.

In the first two hours after going live, "the site received an overwhelming and unanticipated response of 2 million website visits, causing users to have trouble logging in," a statement from the Health Department said. By about 5 p.m., the NY State of Health website had recorded 10 million hits.

While the department said more than 9,000 New Yorkers had shopped for low-cost plans Tuesday, others were greeted with error messages when clicking on links to register as individuals or families. The links for employers, employees and brokers also experienced problems.

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.