By ANN SANNER Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The pitch for health care coverage is being made at nail salons, pizzerias, mosques and even bars.

As the second enrollment period under President Barack Obama's health care law begins, advocates are employing new tactics and expanding old ones to reach people who need insurance. Some groups are targeting populations they believe slipped through the cracks during the last enrollment period.

"We've had great success at laundromats," said Robin Stockton, the navigator program director for the Center for Family Services, a nonprofit based in Camden, New Jersey.

The informal chat between wash-and-dry cycles can pique interest and lead some customers to call their hotline for more information, she said.

"Typically," she said, "the question you get back is: 'Is this that Obamacare thing?'"

Open enrollment started Saturday and runs until Feb. 15. The HealthCare.gov website, where people can sign up and search for coverage, appeared to be running smoothly Saturday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell tweeted that the website opened shortly after 1 a.m., with more than 23,000 people submitting applications within the first eight hours. She said 1.2 million unique visitors looked at coverage using the site's window-shopping tool in the last week.

In Washington state, though, the health care exchange shut down after the first few hours of open enrollment as state officials and software engineers tried to resolve a problem with tax credit calculations.

And just days before open enrollment, an old video clip surfaced showing an adviser who helped draft the law saying "the stupidity of the American voter" helped Democrats pass the complex legislation. Obama, just before leaving an economic summit in Australia on Sunday, said the public was not misled about provisions of the law. He said there was no provision that was not extensively debated or made fully transparent.

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Health care push comes to bars, nail salons - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports