Online health insurance exchanges debuted on Tuesday, and millions of Americans visited the sites to assess their eligibility for different plans and attempt to sign up. But the demand on the exchange portal sites apparently exceeded many state officials' expectations, leading to intermittent portal outages. Fourteen states, plus the District of Columbia, are running their own health exchanges, as is the federal government, which is operating the HealthCare.gov exchange on behalf of more than 30 other states. One lingering question, however, concerns not just the long-term uptime and availability that consumers should expect from these exchanges, but whether they can handle people's personal data in a manner that maintains privacy while keeping it safe from hackers.
