HealthCare.gov’s ‘Maintenance’ Woes on National Youth Enrollment Day

Update:  This version clarifies that the entire HealthCare.gov site is not scheduled to be down on Saturday. 

Parts of the HealthCare.gov website will be down from 3 p.m. Saturday – which coincides with Get Covered America’s National Youth Enrollment Day – until 5 a.m. Tuesday.

“[T]he Social Security Administration will conduct required, regularly scheduled systems maintenance activities over the three-day weekend,” according to the HealthCare.gov blog.

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The notice encourages potential enrollees to finalize their coverage by telephone next week if they miss the February 15 deadline.

The Social Security Administration’s maintenance shutdown “will prevent applicants from verifying their Social Security numbers and other data” needed to enroll through HealthCare.gov, according to Reuters. Although some of HealthCare.gov’s functions still will be accessible, the Obama Administration announced that “you won’t be able to find out what you qualify for during the maintenance period.”

Meanwhile, Buzzfeed reported that “[t]here are hundreds of events scheduled for National Youth Enrollment Day across the country aimed at reaching a very broad population of the young and uninsured,” including “an enrollment event at a Baptist church, a neighborhood health care fair, and an ‘ACA pub crawl’.”

In the same article, youth recruitment groups called the timing of the site maintenance “not ideal” and “unfortunate.”

The administration has been courting “young invincibles” through social media campaigns, television ads, and various events in an effort to offset the rising costs associated with a higher number of elderly and sick enrollees.

Approximately a quarter of current enrollees fall into the youth demographic, a figure that the White House hopes to increase to 38 percent by the end of the enrollment period.

This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.