Health and Human Services is claiming—carefully buried in one of their blogs, rather than on the Web site’s front page—that among the fixes they have in place is the ability for potential health insurance buyers to check out the policies and premiums on offer before they’re required to create an account (to register) and start giving up personal information.

Sure enough, they’ve got a cool new SEE PLANS NOW button on the front page of HealthCare.gov.  Along with the warning that, as of today (24 Oct 13), I only have 158 days to figure out a way past this…software…and get enrolled.

So, how’d that button work?  Not very well, as this attempt (24 Oct, still) demonstrates:

There’s a button added, and the problem has been passed along.

The old “a problem passed is a problem solved” meme.

Notice in passing, too: that’s a 37-character “Reference ID” that I’m supposed to read over the phone to someone in HHS’ call center for HealthCare.gov.  Yeah.