Frustrated by trying to register on HealthCare.gov? You're hardly alone. Of the 9.47 million people who tried to register in the first week, only 271,00 were able to create an account, according to one analysis. That's about 1 in 35. Many people couldn't even create user names and passwords. For tips on how to get past the roadblocks, we talked with a Phoenix software tester named Ben Simo. When he got stuck trying to register a family member, Simo used his professional know-how to look beneath the hood and come up with some suggestions for creating a Healthcare.gov user account that actually works.

If all this is too much for you to absorb, follow our previous advice: Stay away from Healthcare.gov for at least another month if you can. Hopefully that will be long enough for its software vendors to clean up the mess they’ve made. The coverage available through the marketplaces won’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014, at the earliest, and you have until Dec. 15 to enroll if you need insurance that starts promptly.