Verizon Data Failure Takes Down Health Insurance Websites
Computer servers hosting a key part of the health law's infrastructure relied upon by all 14 state-run health websites, as well as by the federal website that serves 36 states, failed Sunday. Terremark, a unit of Verizon that operates the servers, could not immediately give officials a timeline for fixing the problems.
Bloomberg/The Washington Post: Obamacare Insurance Web Sites Limited By Verizon Data Hub Failure
Computer servers hosting a key piece of Obamacare’s insurance enrollment program failed today, leaving federal and independent state exchanges unable to provide most services. The data services hub, a system that supplies tax information and other data to Web sites run by the U.S. and 14 states to sell medical coverage, was unavailable after a malfunction at the data center that hosts it (Wayne, 10/27).
The Wall Street Journal: Data Center Outage Hits Health Care Website
The federal data hub relied on by all 14 state-run health care insurance exchanges and 36 exchanges run by the federal government was not working Sunday because the company hosting the hub lost its network connectivity, the Obama administration said. The outage means people trying to sign up online for health care insurance in all 50 states could not complete the process. Terremark, a unit of Verizon Enterprise Solutions that operates the data center that hosts the federal data hub as well as the HealthCare.gov site, couldn't immediately give the Department of Health and Human Services a timeline for fixing the problem, which was affecting customers other than the federal government, HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said (Radnofsky, 10/27).
Reuters: Data Center Glitch Is Latest Problem In 'Obamacare' Rollout
A data center critical for allowing uninsured Americans to buy health coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare law went down on Sunday, halting online enrollment for all 50 states in the latest problem to hit the program's troubled rollout. The data center operated by Verizon's Terremark experienced a connectivity issue that caused it to shut down, affecting the federal government's already problem-plagued online marketplace Healthcare.gov and similar sites operated by 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (Morgan and Begley, 10/27).