Update 7pm: Covered California extended the deadline to sign up for a health insurance plan -- with some caveats.
Original Post:
Covered California is seeing "truly unprecedented enrollment," says executive director Peter Lee. Sunday was the busiest day ever -- that includes the days before the last big deadline in December. Just over 500,000 people enrolled in a Covered California plan by Dec 31, 2013. Covered California had reached the 1 million mark earlier in March. More than 1.2 million people had signed up for a plan as of 2am Monday morning. Nearly 400,000 people started applications in the last week.
To help keep the website running in the face of the surging traffic, Covered California is taking parts of it that don't have to do specifically with enrollment offline. The "preview plans" function is being disabled, although people can still use "shop and compare."
If traffic gets very high, individuals might find themselves logged out once they have started their application -- but before they have picked a health insurance plan. "We know that's not ideal, but we want to make sure the people that want to enroll can get in the system," Lee says.