President Obama promises to iron out glitches on healthcare website

President Barack Obama conceded that technical "kinks" had bedeviled the rollout of the federal healthcare website, but said the administration had launched a "tech surge" to fix it and emphasized that the law would give uninsured Americans access to reasonably priced, quality insurance.

"Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed," President Obama told supporters in the Rose Garden. But he insisted: "The product, the health insurance, is good. The prices are good. It is a good deal. People don't just want it; they're showing up to buy it." The President relaunched his campaign to sell the law as Republicans announced plans for hearings on the balky website. A Gallup poll last week found that 7 out of 10 uninsured Americans were "not too familiar" or "not familiar at all" with the online marketplaces. Administration officials initially claimed the problems were caused by the unexpectedly high volume of visitors to the federal portal, which serves consumers in 36 states. President Obama acknowledged that the website needed to work "better, faster, sooner," but did not explain what went wrong or when it would work properly. He said "some of the best IT talent in the entire country" was part of a "tech surge" to fix it.