Verizon Terremark data center issue takes down HealthCare.gov site

October 28, 2013 | By Sean Buckley

A Terremark data center outage on Sunday is the latest issue to afflict the Obama administration's troubled HealthCare.gov website.

Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Terremark's parent company, did not immediately respond to a FierceTelecom request for an update on the outage. Neither the Obama administration nor Terremark could give a timeline to Reuters as to when the problem would be fixed.

Terremark received $15.5 million to provide its cloud computing services to the HealthCare.gov website. It began work on the five-year contract in 2011.

The Department of Health and Human Services said that the Healthcare.gov "application and enrollment system is down because the company that hosts site has an outage" and that "Terremark is working to fix" the issue, reports Reuters.

A number of technical issues besides the Terremark network connection have prevented consumers from being able to access the site and enroll for health care services since it was launched on Oct. 1.

This outage, which according to the Reuters report began early on Sunday, drove the data center to lose network connectivity with the federal government's data services hub. This element provides a bridge between insurance marketplaces and various federal agencies and can verify a person's identity, citizenship, and other facts.
Without the hub, consumers are unable to apply online for coverage or determine their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay for insurance premiums.