Washington State Exchange OFFLINE (Update: Back online now)

UPDATE: OK, they're back online now.

Oh, Crap...THIS can't be good...

Apparently the Washington HealthPlan Finder is experiencing a technical outage today...

This morning we were notified by the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) of an unscheduled outage of the state’s eligibility service.

This service provides the critical function of determining whether a Washington Healthplanfinder customer qualifies for tax credits or Washington Apple Health (Medicaid). Our inability to make this determination requires us to take Washington Healthplanfinder offline until DSHS has resolved the issue. DSHS staff are working hard so that we may bring our system up as soon as possible.

Updates and tips for customers related to this outage will continue to be provided at www.wahbexchange.org/news-center/outages-maintenance.

If a customer’s inability to select their health plan on Washington Healthplanfinder is caused by an operational issue with our system or one of our system partners, they may be eligible to enroll outside the standard enrollment window. This determination will be made by Exchange staff after reviewing the specific application in question. That said, we encourage customers to check back on our status before the Open Enrollment deadline of Sunday, Jan. 31 at 11:59 p.m.

Um...guys, you've been offline since 6am...I'd say at least a 1-day extension is appropriate at this point, don't you?

As a reminder our toll-free Customer Support Center at 1-855-WAFINDER is available and will have special hours tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. You may also find events in your area as well as navigator and brokers on our website, www.wahbexchange.org.

Aside from this rather unfortunately-timed outage, WA is actually doing pretty well; they tacked on another 2,000 people or so from 1/24 - 1/29, but would have to rack up an absurd 20,000 people tomorrow alone (or early next week, assuming an extension) in order to hit my 210K target:

We remain committed to providing the best marketplace experience for our state and its residents. The fact that we are entering this weekend with more than 190,000 customers having selected a qualified health plan is testament to that effort.