And it's down – AGAIN! Obamacare website crashes TWICE on enrollment deadline day

More than six hours of website outages plagued healthcare.gov on the last day for enrollment, harkening back to the system's disastrous October 1 launch

White House spokesman Jay Carney makes stressed-out epic gaffe: 'Six out of ten people without insurance can get insurance for $100 a day or less'

Administration claims enrollment numbers 'significantly above 6 million,' but still won't say how many have paid

Carney defended the new policy of allowing people who have started the signup process to complete it later

On the final day of enrollment this year for medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government website that runs the program went offline. Again.

And White House Press Secretary Jay Carney found himself in the awkward position of taking a victory lap – citing enrollment totals of more than 6 million – while last-minute customers were frozen out of the system.

Carney appeared rattled at the beginning of his daily press briefing, committing an unforced error that quickly attracted scorn on social media.

'Six out of ten people without insurance can get insurance for $100 a day or less,' he said, instead of citing monthly prices.

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The Obama administration's health care website stumbled on deadline day for new sign-ups. Visitors to HealthCare.gov on Monday morning saw messages that the site was down for maintenance Oops! White House press secretary Jay Carney was rattled by the Obamacare news on Monday, saying in error that some uninsured Americans could get coverage for '$100 per day' -- instead of '$100 per month'

Medical insurance enrollment fairs across the country saw an increase in participation over the weekend and on Monday, putting new levels of strain on the website as volunteers enrolled people on-site

BREAKING: on deadline day to enroll for new coverage, http://t.co/GBDCZGg2qN is DOWN. Users cannot log in to accounts pic.twitter.com/TdzCnpma5j — Peter Doocy (@pdoocy) March 31, 2014

Healthcare.gov was unavailable for six hours in the early hours of Monday, came back online for a half-hour, and then began connected visitors to its 'virtual waiting room,' a program that contacts users when the website has the capacity to serve them.

By midday, however, even that stopgap system was offline, leaving new potential enrollees with no options.

The website appeared to return to service around 1:45 p.m., but suffered additional glitches as late as 2:10.

'The tech team monitoring Healthcare.gov in real time has identified an issue with users creating new accounts,' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Aaron Albright said Monday.



'The application and enrollment tools are unavailable to new users at the moment. The tech team is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.'



While the website was knocked offline, Vice President Joe Biden appeared in a pre-taped video interview on the Rachel Ray Show to encourage even more Americans to go online and enroll.

'I think people are going to be really, really surprised how well this has turned out,' he said.

'Get in the queue, now. Get in the queue. There is still time today.'

The White House blamed its online problems on a crush of last-minute customers, including more than 8.7 million Web visitors in the last week and 1.2 million on Saturday alone.



Carney reminded reporters in his afternoon briefing that due to a last-minute policy shift unveiled last week, anyone who manages to begin the enrollment process will be permitted to finish it at a later date.

He compared the situation to long lines on Election Day, and the generally accepted practice of allowing people to vote if they're in line when the polls close.

But the White House's new policy only requires insurance-seekers who missed Monday's midnight deadline to check a box and claim that they tried in earnest to enroll in time.

Carney parried a question about how many previously uninsured Americans will be covered because of Obamacare, and how many of them were newly insured after Obamacare's strict minimum requirements caused the cancellation of their previous policies.

'In some cases it's kinda hard to measure this,' he said, because the insurance marketplaces's normal 'churn' regularly eliminates some policies every year anyway.

What to do? Americans have struggled with online signups and call centers, leading tens of thousands to flood in-person events staffed by 'navigator' volunteers

People using the healthcare.gov website have encountered tech glitches as everyone entering the system -- including millions of new Medicaid enrollees -- competed for scarce computer resources on the final day More than six million Americans have chosen health insurance plans on healthcare.gov and websites run by 14 states and the District of Columbia, but the question of how many have actually paid for coverage is a thorny one

He also boasted on Monday that the six-month enrollment total for Obamacare policies will be 'significantly above 6 million,' but declined to say – as he has many times before – how many of those enrollees have actually become insured by paying their premiums.

'We don't have those figures,' he insisted.

Estimated compiled by MailOnline from states that report such numbers indicate that as many as one out of five subscribers haven't paid, lowering any White House numbers by 20 percent. That would take a possible 6.5 million enrollment total down to 5.2 million.

Republicans are counting on Obamacare's dysfunctions – not just the enrollment roadblocks, but higher costs, limits on care and smaller physician networks – for a political windfall in November.

'We're not really going to know whether [Obamacare] worked or not until the third or fourth year. And of course, that's two elections down the road, Washington and Lee University Law School professor Timothy Jost told Reuters.



'What I worry about is that we won't be able to figure out whether it's worked or not until it's too late.'

White House senior adviser David Plouffe said Sunday on the ABC News program 'This Week' that the GOP will fail in its bid to parlay Obamacare's failures into a sweep and a takeover of the U.S. Senate.