Health Care Sites Buggy on First Day of Obamacare

Several state and federal government-run health insurance marketplaces opened Tuesday with glitches, delays and even crashes, marring the launch of the centerpiece of President Obama's health care law.

Some of the delays were due to high volume. President Obama said in a White House conference that more 1 million people tried to use the sites before they officially opened at 8 a.m. ET.

The exchanges are the critical part of the Affordable Care Act's requirement that uninsured Americans buy health insurance. They opened Tuesday for business and the open-enrollment period for insurance customers will last until March 31.

"Like every new law, every new product signup, there are going to be some glitches that we will fix," Obama said.

Those glitches frustrated potential insurance customers around the country, such as John Sanders, of Kaukauna, Wis. He said he signed up on the exchange website three weeks ago but hit snags Tuesday.

Sanders called the system's launch "reckless at best. I will not accept the 'heavy traffic' argument. What else would be expected on the national launch date?"

He and others faced many of the same problems online shoppers often do on the busy Monday after Thanksgiving known as Cyber Monday or like the launch of a new retail site.