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2 million visited Healthcare.gov on Monday and Tuesday, 'prison glitch' fixed

2 million visited Healthcare.gov on Monday and Tuesday, 'prison glitch' fixed

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Obamacare Healthcare.gov website (STOCK)
Obamacare Healthcare.gov website (STOCK)

Almost 2 million people visited the federal health insurance marketplace on Monday and Tuesday, nearly doubling the site's traffic, an administration official told reporters today.

"Healthcare.gov remains stable," says Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the health department agency in charge of the site.

The emergency tech team that has been repairing the site since its problematic launch on October 1st also added the ability for users to reset their applications and start over.

Users who experience errors such as the notorious "prison glitch," in which the application insisted users specify how long they'd been incarcerated even if they hadn't, can now have a fresh start.

The prison glitch has also been fixed, Bataille says.

"Healthcare.gov remains stable."

The error rate, the percentage of time that a user is prevented from advancing to the next page, is down to 0.6 percent according to the administration's measurements, and response times are down to 630 milliseconds. At least one independent analysis is recording much higher response times, however.

The administration has declined to release enrollment figures, but Reuters reported that more people signed up on Sunday and Monday than during the entire month of October. With some exceptions, Americans must enroll in a health insurance plan by the start of 2014 or risk a fine.

The administration is still dodging questions about the error rates in forms sent to insurance companies, forms that could cause customers to enroll in the wrong plan. The administration says that information must be "validated" before it's released. Additionally, Medicaid officials have reported problems with the data sent for new enrollees through Healthcare.gov.