Insurance buyers get one more day

Associated Press

CHICAGO

Anticipating heavy traffic on the government’s health care website, the Obama administration extended Monday’s deadline for signing up for insurance by a day, giving Americans in 36 states more time to select a plan.

It was the latest in a series of pushed-back deadlines and delays that have marked the rollout of the health care law.

But federal officials urged buyers not to procrastinate.

“You should not wait until tomorrow. If you are aiming to get coverage Jan. 1, you should try to sign up today,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the federal agency in charge of the overhaul.

Bataille said the grace period — which runs through today — was being offered to accommodate people from different time zones and to allow for any technical problems that might result from a last-minute rush of applicants.

The HealthCare.gov site had a disastrous, glitch-prone debut in October but has gone through extensive improvements to make it more reliable and increase its capacity, and the administration said the system was running well Monday.

By the afternoon, the site had received a record 850,000 visits, five times the number logged by the same time last Monday, the administration said. Bataille said the system was handling the volume with error rates of less than 1 in 200 and response times of less than one second.