CHICAGO Anticipating heavy traffic on the governments health care website, the Obama administration extended Mondays deadline for signing up for insurance by a day, giving Americans in 36 states more time to select a plan.

It was the latest in a series of pushed-back deadlines and delays that have marked the rollout of the health care law.

But federal officials urged buyers not to procrastinate.

Certified enrollment specialist Richelle Baker, right, talks to Martha Medina, left, and her daughter Martha at a Healthcare Insurance Marketplace office in Miami on Friday. The government extended Mondays deadline for signing up for insurance by one day. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

You should not wait until tomorrow. If you are aiming to get coverage Jan. 1, you should try to sign up today, said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the federal agency in charge of the overhaul.

Bataille said the grace period which runs through today was being offered to accommodate people from different time zones and to allow for any technical problems that might result from a last-minute rush of applicants.

The HealthCare.gov site had a disastrous, glitch-prone debut in October but has gone through extensive improvements to make it more reliable and increase its capacity, and the administration said the system was running well Monday.

By the afternoon, the site had received a record 850,000 visits, five times the number logged by the same time last Monday, the administration said. Bataille said the system was handling the volume with error rates of less than 1 in 200 and response times of less than one second.

The Obama administration is hoping for a surge of year-end enrollments to show that the technical problems were merely a temporary setback. That would also go a long way toward easing concerns that insurance companies wont be able to sign up enough young, healthy people to keep prices low for everyone.

But the grace period may have been a tacit acknowledgement that the website remains vulnerable to heavy traffic. Whats more, the delay offered critics of Obamacare another opportunity to argue that the law still isnt working and that President Barack Obama keeps changing the rules.

See the original post:

Health care insurance shoppers get 1-day extension