The Washington State Obamacare exchange went offline Saturday morning just hours after the start of the 2015 open enrollment period for the health-care law.
The website was incorrectly calculating the amount of advanced premium tax credits, effectively premium subsidies and the exchange took the website down entirely while it tries to fix the problem.
“In preparation for year two, the Exchange had in place quality control review to capture any irregularities that might appear in applications during the first few hours of open enrollment,” the exchange said in a statement. “This review process discovered that the state’s Eligibility System and Washington Healthplanfinder were providing 2015 tax credit amounts that were inaccurate, sometimes by as little as a few dollars.”
Washington’s Obamacare exchange didn’t have quite as many problems during the first year of Obamacare as other states that were forced to give up on their sites entirely, but the exchange has been struggling with subsidy calculations and billing issues for over a year.
Just last month, the state exchange was still facing problems with billing and technical glitches for 1,300 accounts created during the first enrollment period and were trying to get those problems sorted out before this year’s enrollment began. (RELATED: Washington Obamacare Exchange Still Hasn’t Fixed Technical Problems)