It tells me that there are more than 44,000 people talking about HealthCare.gov on Facebook. I wonder what they’re saying.
A mass of health care consumers annoyed, confused and stymied by the technical Titanic that is HealthCare.gov have taken to the portal’s associated social media pages to ask questions, log complaints — even just vent about the program in general.
It’s a highly negative and telling visual of the program’s systemic failure in handling customers out of the gate, no matter the circumstances that the administration has cited to date.
“How is it that Facebook, which is a non-essential social networking web site, can reliably handle BILLIONS of electronic interactions per second, but the Healthcare.gov site, which is literally the very heart of the Obamacare program, wasn’t ready for the obvious millions of visitors that you had to know it would be receiving?” one Facebook user asked.
This goes without mentioning the stream of tweets directed at the @HealthCareGov handle, many of which complained about the website’s lacking functionality.
@HealthCareGov Day 7 Login failure attempt #54 “Downstream error” #healthcare pic.twitter.com/ADi4wbwa5Z
— Ben Robertson (@BenHRobertson) October 7, 2013
@BarackObama @HealthCareGov THIS IS THE WORST SYSTEM EVER!!! Website and Phone support SUCKS! 7 Days @ it with no resolve. Screw #Obamacare
— Robert Speer (@rsvirus) October 7, 2013
@HealthCareGov Can’t get logged on from Arizona. Your server keeps timing out!! #Obamacare
— Lynn Schaub (@SeldomSeen52) October 7, 2013
@HHSGov @HealthCareGov So now I can’t even log in…doesn’t.recognize my log in info!! Wth!!! This site will be the death of me!!
— Ginny Proffitt (@Ginnyproffitt) October 7, 2013
Took 2 hours to create an account on @HealthCareGov that I now can’t even log in to. Oh well, couldn’t afford it anyways. #obamacare #fail
— Justin Saylors (@jdysay) October 7, 2013
Wk #2 Still no access to @HealthCareGov for online price discovery in IL. Still too much demand? Doubt it. No stats on sign up either
— Kee Bird (@gretl08) October 7, 2013
@HealthCareGov In Kansas, we still get a blank white page at /marketplace/auth/userprofile when logging in. Jekyll guy fired yet?
— Size My Tires (@SizeMyTires) October 7, 2013
Day 7 of my attempt to sign up for ObamaCare via the @HealthCareGov website. Day 7 of continued errors & no assistance from chat or twitter
— Shannon Kish (@shannonkish) October 7, 2013
@HealthCareGov I still cannot get logged on. It goes and goes and finally times out. Does not matter what time of day or nite.doesn’t work
— Joanne Coyle (@JoanneCoyle) October 7, 2013
In the words of a friend, HealthCare.gov is ‘having a day’ — or about week’s worth of them now.