Ask HN: Why can't I access healthcare.gov from outside the US?

[llamataboot]

Currently living abroad. Need to access the exchange to buy health insurance. Do I really need to access it through a proxy server?

[hiciu]

  $ dig healthcare.gov +short
  92.123.189.103

  $ dig www.healthcare.gov +short
  www.geodirector.hc.gov.akadns.net.
  bh.georedirector.akadns.net.
  127.0.0.1

  $ wget healthcare.gov -O /dev/null
  --2013-12-11 15:57:05--  http://healthcare.gov/
  Resolving healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)... 23.8.119.205, 2a02:26f0:59:38e::1ce1, 2a02:26f0:59:396::1ce1
  Connecting to healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)|23.8.119.205|:80... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
  Location: https://healthcare.gov/ [following]
  --2013-12-11 15:57:05--  https://healthcare.gov/
  Connecting to healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)|23.8.119.205|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
  Location: https://www.healthcare.gov/ [following]
  --2013-12-11 15:57:06--  https://www.healthcare.gov/
  Resolving www.healthcare.gov (www.healthcare.gov)... 127.0.0.1
  Connecting to www.healthcare.gov (www.healthcare.gov)|127.0.0.1|:443... failed: Connection refused.

[jongibbins]

I think the site may be down. Visiting http://www.healthcare.gov gives me an upside down IIS7 logo! http://www.healthcare.gov/welcome.png

(I'm in the UK)

[caw]

In the US -- getting the main page of the site. So either it's a CDN thing, they brought the site back up since the original post, or it is indeed region locked.

[waffl]

Oddly enough, I just wanted to take a look at the site, living in Germany.

downforeveryoneorjustme shows it's online.

Also checked on my NY based vps via Lynx and the site loads. So it must be region locked.

[meerita]

I see this:

"It works!"

Wich to me is an insult. You can work on something much better and informative for the people that such message.

[yebyen]

This is the default index.html for Apache

I think from what others are saying, it's redirected you to localhost:80. You must be running a default Apache config on localhost. I don't think they (healthcare.gov) are.

[munimkazia]

I am from India, and I am getting the default nginx page. That does not look good.