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Some Snags As Health Exchange Sign Up Starts

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

At the White House today, President Obama acknowledged some early hiccups with the government's website where people can compare plans and sign up for coverage.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now, like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix. I've been saying this from the start. For example, we found out that there have been times this morning where the site has been running more slowly than it normally will. The reason is because more than one million people visited HealthCare.gov before seven in the morning.

BLOCK: By mid-afternoon, federal officials said that number had jumped to 2.8 million people.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

But access to many individual state sites was spotty all day. And sites in at least three states - Minnesota, Maryland and Hawaii - were largely down. Officials stress that people will have six months to complete the process and that these early kinks will be worked out. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.