Thwarted Users Vent About Obamacare Website on Facebook

Healthcare.gov, the Obama Administration’s online marketplace for health insurance that has suffered from software glitches since its launch last week, is taking a beating on Facebook.

Public spleen venting is nothing new for government Facebook pages, especially ones connected with hot button political topics such as the Obama Administration’s healthcare reform initiative. The social network’s post-and-reply format offers easy entry for people eager to criticize some government decision or simply to criticize the government generally.

Even a post on the Homeland Security Department page -- a haven for  vitriol -- about national broadband deployment can draw comments such as “The DHS should be defunded and disbanded forthwith, it is an enemy of freedom.”

Healthcare.gov has been drawing an especially high volume of comments since last Tuesday’s launch, though, running between 1,500 and 2,000 on most posts.  

The majority of negative comments attack the healthcare reform law generally, but a sizeable minority complain of long wait times, glitch service and not being able to register.

Here’s one example from Facebook user Jeffrey Alman:

sorry but this is a cluster - I have registered yet can not log in - on the off chance that I did enter my username and password incorrectly, I re-registered using the same username. It accepted it, yet when I clicked on the link to verify my email, it said oops - you waited too long. I did it immediately! I wish someone would reply to this. IT DOES NOT WORK!

And another from Tammy Baker Rose:

HealthCare.gov How is it that Facebook, which is a non-essential social networking web site, can reliably handle BILLIONS of electronic interactions per second, but the Healthcare.gov site, which is literally the very heart of the Obamacare program wasn't ready for the obvious millions of visitors that you had to know it would be receiving?