White House: It’s working

WASHINGTON – The Obama Administration has its fingers crossed that most of the problems with the Obamacare website will be fixed by midnight tonight. So promised the Commander in Chief himself Tuesday in Glendale: “This website is going to get fixed, and we are going to be signing people up.”

December 1st was the deadline given to a team of experts to fix HealthCare.gov. Their goal is to ensure the site can handle 50,000 users at any time, and 800,000 users per day.

Luke Chung, president of software company FMC Inc., says the real test will be how fast people can get through the site. “The challenge isn't how many lanes do you have on the highway, it's how fast the cars can go down the highway. Because if there is any breakdown, you're going to have a big traffic jam and pile up behind you.”

Officials insist this isn't a relaunch, but rather an upgrade, and that some bugs may remain.

Since its debut a month ago, some users trying to sign up for health coverage have run into crashes, error messages and delays.

The website is just one of several stumbles for the president's Affordable Care Act, including individual policy cancellations. That's brought much-criticism from the right. “There's been delays out of the wazoo for this thing,” says conservative blogger Crystal Wright. “First the President delayed the individual mandate, now we find small business won't be able to go online and enroll until, what, another delay, a year.”

Those stumbles are costing President Obama. According to a CNN poll of polls, his approval rate is at 41%. But he remains stoic.

“There are going to be moments where things aren't going as smoothly as you want,” he said in a recent interview with Barbara Walters. “Very rarely are the good thing that happen get the attention as the things that aren't working as well.”

Martha Shade
KUSI News