At midday the site has had more than 380,000 visitors, the administration said. W.H. kicks off turnaround campaign

President Barack Obama, confident that HealthCare.gov is finally working, attempted Tuesday to shift the nation’s attention toward Affordable Care Act benefits that he says were overshadowed by website problems at a critical time for the law.

The president’s brief speech marked the start of the White House’s latest messaging push, a three-week campaign that aims to boost anemic enrollment figures and put Republicans on the defensive after Obamacare’s embarrassing rollout.


“Do not let the initial problems with the website discourage you, because it’s working better now, and it’s just going to keep working better over time,” Obama said from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “Every day I check to make sure it’s working better.”

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Obama’s comments showed the White House believes that the worst of these enrollment woes are behind it and that the administration can gain traction in asking the American public and Capitol Hill Democrats for a second chance with HealthCare.gov.

“My main message today is we’re not going back. That seems to be the only alternative that Obamacare’s opponents have,” the president said, adding that millions of people have already received benefits under the law and “there are millions more who stand to be helped.”

Earlier Tuesday, two top officials, White House deputy senior adviser David Simas and Mike Hash, director of the Office of Health Reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, briefed House Democrats on HealthCare.gov’s progress for the first time since the administration said it met its website repair goals. The lawmakers, who’ve had their patience tested over the past two months, expressed cautious optimism afterward that the site was finally on track. They said they had no intention of abandoning the law.

“We’re working,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.). “We think that until every American who has a chance to qualify for these health insurance policies gets it, we’ve got work to do.”

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The retooled enrollment portal seems to be running more smoothly this week, racking up almost 1.4 million visitors as of noon Tuesday without crashing. There are lingering questions, though, about whether insurers are receiving accurate application data from the website, and the administration has refused to characterize the extent of the problems with those enrollment files.

Obama was reluctant to take a victory lap Tuesday, although he said the administration had repaired HealthCare.gov as promised.

“We’ve learned not to make wild promises about how perfectly smooth it’s going to be at all times,” he said.

By midday, the website had drawn more than 380,000 visitors without having to deploy a new virtual waiting room that delays entry into the system during periods of high traffic. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency overseeing the exchanges, launched the waiting room Monday when about 35,000 visitors came to the website simultaneously — though the administration has said the improved HealthCare.gov is now able to handle 50,000 visitors at the same time.

The administration also highlighted one of the early enrollment success stories, reporting that 1.5 million people had been determined to be eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the month of October alone. Those sign-ups far outpace the enrollments for private plans sold through the new federal and state exchanges.

The coming days will determine whether HealthCare.gov can continue to bear the stress of increased traffic and whether the administration can fix major bugs still lurking in the system and preventing insurers from getting correct enrollment data. With the Dec. 23 deadline for enrolling in coverage starting Jan. 1 approaching fast, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration is confident everyone who wants coverage next month will be able to get it.

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“We believe and are confident that they’ll be able to ensure that accuracy in time for the Jan. 1 beginning of coverage,” Carney said.

Even if the website has vastly improved since its rocky Oct. 1 launch, the administration faces a significant challenge meeting its stated goal of signing up 7 million people through the health insurance exchanges by March 31.

Republican lawmakers plan ongoing hearings to continue highlighting what they see as flaws and weaknesses in the policy as well as incompetence in the implementation. House leaders Tuesday accused the administration of hiding facts about Obamacare’s rollout and its disastrous effects.

“At this point, one has to ask what else are they hiding,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said. “While the White House wants to claim HealthCare.gov is working, we know Obamacare is still plagued with problems.”

The White House’s new campaign will try to highlight the Affordable Care Act’s benefits in the face of the health care law’s sharply higher unfavorable ratings. The Obama administration and its allies plan to feature an Obamacare benefit each day until Dec. 23. People can sign up after that — until March 31 — but not if they want the benefits to start in January.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted at the messaging challenge that remains for the White House, which has barely budged public opinion in its favor more than three years after the health law’s passage.

“I wish I hadn’t called it Obamacare before because that has politicized it and Republicans have used it as a pejorative term,” Hoyer told reporters.

During its daily briefing Tuesday, CMS continued to stonewall reporters asking about the scope of errors with the enrollment files the federal exchange is sending to insurers. The White House rejected a story that said about one-third of those files contained inaccurate information, but the administration has refused to provide its own number.

Carney said the White House is confident that problems with the so-called 834 enrollment files will be cleared up this month and “huge improvements” have already been made, he said.

Ginger Gibson, Jennifer Haberkorn and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.