Well, despite the government shutdown, the insurance marketplace is officially open! New Yorkers have literally been coming out in droves to try and be the first to sign up for coverage – NY State of Health is reporting that over 2 million people visited the marketplace website in the first two hours!

Unfortunately, that kind of internet traffic is enough to bring a good portion of the sites functionality to a halt.  Personally, I was able to go on the site and create an account and log in, but once I started loading in my information I encountered a few glitches that wouldn’t allow me to move further.   These types of bumps were expected given that its a new site with a lot of interactive functionality and a whole lot of users trying to do the same thing at once.  We are hoping they will smooth out once traffic slows to a normal level.

If folks simply can’t wait and need to do SOMETHING to start the process, you can always contact your local navigator program and set up an appointment to come in and enroll in coverage later this week, this month, or anytime between now and the end of March.  You can click here to find a list of all of the navigators and in person assistors in every county.  Or, if that link is (ahem) not working, you can check out this alternate map of the Community Service Society’s Navigator Network, which also has navigators in every county in the state except for Chemumg.

If anybody has been able to get through already and sign up for coverage – let us know! We’d love to hear about it!