As its first key enrollment deadline nears, MNsure notified insurance agents Friday about five glitches that have snagged some users of the health exchange website.
"The number of consumers affected by each issue varies from a few dozen to a few hundred," MNsure wrote in an e-mail distributed to insurance agents. "The majority of consumers applying and enrolling through MNsure will not encounter these issues."
One error message tells users that MNsure can't calculate the tax credit they should receive from the federal government to discount premium costs.
The tax credit problem first cropped up shortly after open enrollment started Nov. 15, and re-emerged at some point in the past week or so, said Joe Campbell, a MNsure spokesman.
It's not an issue for users going forward, Campbell said, but MNsure is still working to help those who encountered the error message. He said that some of those affected are being told to go ahead and buy coverage without the tax credit, which will be provided later.
The number of people hitting such snags is smaller than the number successfully enrolling in coverage, Campbell said.
"Since the beginning of open enrollment, fewer people have encountered an error on our site than the number of people that enrolled in one day — today — on MNsure," Campbell said Friday. "We had 3,000 people enroll in [private] health plans today."
Minnesota launched the MNsure exchange last year to implement the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires almost all Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty.