Healthcare.gov Crashes Again In The Middle Of Pivotal Congressional Oversight Hearing

Adrianne Jeffries | The Verge | October 30, 2013

The new health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov went down again this morning, the latest hiccup in a month of technical problems. The timing could not have been worse for the administration: Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in the middle of testifying before Congress.

"Let's put the screenshot up,"  Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said, referring to an image of the error message on Healthcare.gov today that reads, "The system is down at the moment."

"This is what is happening right now with the website," Blackburn said. "We've had somebody in the back trying to sign on. It is down. It is not working."

The error is the result of a problem in a data center operated by Verizon's Terremark, Sebelius says. The data center failed over the weekend, putting Healthcare.gov out of service for several hours.