WASHINGTON — With less than a week left for people to sign up for health insurance, the Obama administration said Tuesday that it would allow more time to people who had tried to apply but were blocked by technical problems with the federal exchange.
Several states running their own exchanges, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Nevada, have taken similar steps in the last two weeks.
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Open enrollment was scheduled to end on Monday for all Americans. The White House had previously insisted that the deadline was firm and would not be extended.
Under the move planned by the administration, some people will be given a special enrollment period, beyond the March 31 deadline, if they can show they were not able to enroll because of an error by the federal exchange or by the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Federal officials allowed a special enrollment period, on a case-by-case basis, for some people who were unable to meet the Dec. 24 enrollment deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1.
Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal insurance exchange, said Tuesday that the special enrollment period could be particularly helpful to people with special circumstances and complex cases.
"Open enrollment ends March 31," Albright said. But he added, "We are experiencing a surge in demand and are making sure that we will be ready to help consumers who may be in line by the deadline to complete enrollment, either online or over the phone."
Asked last week if there would be any kind of grace period for people who had trouble with the website, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said, "As was the case for the December deadline, we're going to want to make sure that people who are already in line can finish their enrollment."
Consumer advocates and insurance companies had been urging the administration to provide extra time for people to complete applications.
While HealthCare.gov is working better than it did last October, they said, it still has occasional problems — when, for example, the website is down or displays inaccurate information about premiums for certain health plans.
In some cases, consumers said they enrolled in an insurance plan through HealthCare.gov but received no information from the insurer and therefore filed a complaint with the federal government.
Federal officials put pressure on the insurer to fix the problem.
But the insurer said it had not received any notice of the person's enrollment from the federal government.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has said repeatedly that the federal website has been repaired and is ready to handle a surge of applications expected just before the deadline.
But White House officials and some technology experts working on the exchange began to worry that the website might freeze up if the demand exceeded expectations.
President Obama and members of his administration have been traversing the country, encouraging people to sign up for insurance, and enrollment fairs around the country have been deluged with applications from people responding to those messages.
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