Really short diary, because Thanksgiving dinner is about to start. But here was my thanksgiving.
First I had to endure my fascist-leaning Father-in-law berating the president with his right-wing talking points list. The noise got louder between he and I and finally after I insisted healthcare.gov worked and he said it didn't, I went ahead and signed up my mother-in-law (they're divorced, but we do Thanksgiving with both of them).
During the sign-up process, his argument shifted from "the site doesn't work" to "the signup process is too complicated" (had to type her SSN twice, two sets of security questions, had to answer her annual income). I said it's much simpler than applying in an insurance company office.
The win: She now is enrolled in a silver plan, paying a mere $20/month due to the subsidy.
The loss: he nearly exploded and stormed off, and my wife is upset that I ruined Thanksgiving. (He did call her when he got home and apologize, saying he's just a sore loser. Which is true.)
But - for the rest of you - go ahead and sign up on healthcare.gov for Thanksgiving, it worked like a charm for me.
P.S. One annoying defect - when shopping for plans, clicking the link to go to the provider's site, often was missing the colon between "https" and the "/." For example: "https/www.carefirst.com". That made it appear as a site not found. I had to manually add the colon, which solved that problem. However I can see someone else having trouble with that. I tell you, so that if you decide to show up your Republican relatives (or sign them up, if they'll let you), you are aware that you may have to work around that at the end.
UPDATE: One other thing that tripped me up. After the biographical part of the application, before you see actual plans, you go to a page where it lists the steps you need to go through. The step is in a white box, and to the right of the white box is a green box with the white word "SET" in it. The word "SET" is not underlined, nor does it look like a button. However you do need to click on the "SET" in order to go into that step. Took me about a minute to figure that out. Minor, just wanted you guys to be aware.