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- By today's Obamacare deadline, 7 million Americans will have signed up for health-care insurance through one of the Obama administration's online exchanges-despite continuing technical difficulties that have plagued HealthCare.gov since its launch.
- Shortly after midnight last night, site operators discovered a bug in the system that required them to take the site offline. Things were up and running by 9 a.m. but around noon, the tens of thousands of people rushing to sign up got a free ticket back to the days of dial-up.
- Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Joanne Peters said that 1.2 million people visited the site during the rush-three times as many as on its previous busiest day.
- (For a dose of "it could be worse" reassurance, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius could give a call to Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, whose state is scrapping its exchange and starting anew.)
- Those stats, Republicans say, are as real as global warming.
- In fact, the number of Americans without health-care insurance is rising, insists Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
- Apparently, the Tea Party stalwart hasn't logged into his Facebook page, where scores of state residents have posted praising their new benefits.
- Besides its ongoing coverage of the fall of American civilization, Fox News stepped back to ask-four years after the ACA's passage-why Republicans hadn't proposed any alternatives.