Get Covered Illinois Sees Spike in Calls, Visitors

A crush of health insurance shoppers in Illinois have been calling a telephone help line set up to answer their questions, as an important deadline looms for the nation's health law.  More than 1,600 people called the Get Covered Illinois Help Desk over the weekend. That's more than double the call volume from the previous weekend. The state's health insurance website saw more than 26,000 visitors over the weekend, an increase of 4,000 from the weekend before.  Yesterday had been the deadline to sign up for consumers who wanted coverage upon the start of the new year.  But the Obama administration effectively extended that deadline by a day, giving people in 36 states, including Illinois, more time to select a plan.