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MNsure Open Enrollment Off To A Chaotic Start

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's been a chaotic first day for MNsure as the state's health care exchange deals with thousands of robo-calls, tied up phone lines and a website that crashed.

The MNsure website was completely shut down for about a half hour and wasn't in full working order for another four hours.

Gov. Mark Dayton said the robocalls were part of a deliberate attempt to make MNsure look bad. MNsure's website crash was part of a larger crash of 70 state websites.

At a heated news conference, MNsure CEO Allison O'Toole insisted the state healthcare exchange is working and that by midday today 15,000 people have started the application process.

"Let's keep our eyes on the big picture -- helping tens of thousands of Minnesotans makes this a good day," she said.

The website crash lasted for half an hour between 11:15 a.m. and 11:45 am. After that, only the application was available online, with none of the comparison tools or plan descriptions available until about 4:30 p.m. As for the robocalls, Dayton said it appears to be an act of sabotage

"Unfortunately, there are some people who want it to work as poorly as possible," he said.

The governor made the comment as he and Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt, who have been sharply critical of each other, announced they are putting politics aside to work together to help draft legislation that would provide some form of rebate for the 123,000 Minnesotans who make too much money to qualify for tax rebates.

"We have made a commitment to the governor that we stand by him, ready to help Minnesotans that are being hurt by this," Daudt said.

The two also pledged to make sure that 8,000 people in five central Minnesota counties who are losing their insurance will have a chance to purchase a plan. The only plans offered in these counties have limits on enrollment, leaving open the possibility that some people may not have any plan to purchase at all.

"I think it's a basic thing we need to do," Daudt said.

"I absolutely second that," Dayton added.

The governor urged those having problems with MNsure to contact their state legislators.

"All the legislators have my resident number, and I urge them to call me if there is a hang up because we want to make this work for the people of Minnesota," Dayton said.

Both Dayton and Daudt say there will be a special session soon after the election, and that the legislature will vote on a bill that could provide monthly rebates to those hardest hit.

As for the robocalls and website crash, both are under investigation by the state's IT department

State IT officials said there is no evidence that the website crash was caused deliberately, and so far there is no evidence the surge in MNsure traffic casued the outage.

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