Remember the days when the media gushed over how high tech the Obama campaign was?

Via WaPo:

The dead-tree version of health insurance enrollment is turning out to be surprisingly popular.

Unable to use new government insurance Web sites that have been plagued by technological problems, those tasked with helping the uninsured sign up for health coverage are bypassing the sites altogether, relying instead on old-fashioned paper applications.

It is a slow and labor-intensive substitute for what was supposed to be a snappy online application, similar to Amazon or Travelocity. But faced with a flood of people eager to get health benefits for the first time, what had been considered Plan B has become theplan — at least until the sites are operating more reliably, according to consumer guides and community groups.

It is one way the frustrating, persistent glitches on some state Web sites as well as the main federal portal serving 36 states have had a ripple effect around the country. Community groups, insurers and consumers have been forced to adjust their strategy on the health-care law, which entered a critical period Oct. 1 with the opening of the health insurance “marketplaces,” also known as exchanges. […]

But getting online has been hard, even for special consumer guides known as “navigators” whose job is to sign people up for coverage. When navigators can’t enroll consumers online, they offer a choice: Come back another day or apply on paper. Many people choose paper.

“These are low- to moderate-income people, stopping by on their lunch break, between picking up their kids. They don’t have time to mess with a Web site that doesn’t work,” said Marie Hurt, director of Southern United Neighborhoods, a New Orleans-based charity that is helping people enroll in coverage in three states. She is encouraging people who stop by her center, inside a church, to avoid the federal Web site for now and use the paper enrollment form. “You don’t want people to get frustrated and give up.”

Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who specializes in health policy, said filling out paper applications does give people the sense that the “process is underway,” he said. But, he added: “It will add to delay. It will add to errors.” […]

Personnel reviewing paper applications need to manually type data from paper into the same Web-based marketplaces that consumers are using. Reviewers are entering through a different “portal” than one consumers use. But it’s the same online system.

“If you don’t have a working [online] system, paper doesn’t do you any good. It’s almost worse because there’s this illusion that you’ve finished something,” he said. “When in fact, it’s just getting stacked up waiting for the system to work.”

HT: Allahpundit