A senior Obama administration health official on Tuesday apologized for the widespread problems of the health care online marketplace, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul.

Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made the apology in a hearing before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

"I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should," said Tavenner, while admitting that the initial experience of the website "has not lived up to our expectations or the expectations of the American people," which is "not acceptable."

Tavenner, whose agency oversees the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, often dubbed as the "Obamacare," was the first Obama administration health official to publicly provide testimony before lawmakers on the health care reform rollout woes.

After its debut on Oct. 1, the online marketplace, the web site, healthcare.gov that aims at getting millions of uninsured Americans enrolled for health care coverage, has been plagued with technical problems and almost out of service during the first two weeks.

Many uninsured Americans who want to shop for health insurance have reported difficulties of signing up and getting enrolled. Healthcare providers have also complained that the system was too unstable to provide them with accurate data of people who successfully get enrolled.

The Obama administration has recently hired contractor Quality Software Services Inc. to be general manager for the effort to fix the broken website. While the site has made some improvement, the enrollment system is still considered too weak to cope with millions of users who are interested in purchasing health insurance plans.

In a televised White House speech last week, Obama acknowledged that the marketplace had not worked "as smoothly as it is supposed to work," but promised that he was confident that all problems could be fixed.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)