

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?
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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.

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

(I'm in the UK)

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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.

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llamataboot
I can access via a proxy, but not from a European IP address. Seems strange to
not even show an error page and just block entire regions from accessing the
site.

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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.

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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.

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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
That's funny because I am seeing nginx's default page. They are probably
balancing the load across servers with different setup.

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

