to the ongoing problems now with the website for the obama care health exchanges. president obama has admitted it has not gone as well as he had hoped. it does not appear the enrollment process is not getting easier, at least not yet. here is cnn white house reporter brianna keilar. reporter: an embarrassing moment for president obama forced to defend his signature health care reform program. you ve probably heard that healthcare.gov, where people can buy medical plans in most states hasn t worked as it was supposed to work. the product is good. the health insurance that is being provided is good. it s high quality. and it s affordable. reporter: he instructed americans to call in. i want to repeat that. 1-800-318-2596. reporter: but it s a slow
1-800-318-2596. jackie, did you get the numbers, first of all, and second of all, what did you think of what he said? did he need more details on what the exact fixes are and when those would be done? right. i think that s what that speech lacked was detail. we don t know who s coming in to fix this. they said they re going to be tech professionals, but who are these people? what exactly are the problems? of course repeating the number over and over again did open him up to a bit of poking fun. you get knives if you call right now in the next 20 minutes. but again, i think the problem was the lack of transparency that has been with this, that has gone along with this rollout is an even bigger problem for the white house because the drip, drip, drip of all of these problems, the red flags, the contractors, i m sure we ll hear more from this energy and commerce committee hearing on thursday. again, these things are what s going to hurt them. if they just got out there and told everybod
healthcare.gov hasn t worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work. the product is good. the health insurance that is being provided is good. it s high quality. and it s affordable. reporter: he instructed americans to call in. i want to repeat that. 1-800-318-2596. reporter: but it s a slow process as cnn senior medical reporter found out. you apply for me and i wait a week or two and i call you back once i have my eligibility and then we would go over the plans. reporter: not exactly what the president had in mind five days before the obama care website launched when he said you could buy insurance. shop for a tv on amazon the same way. reporter: in states that launch their own web sites, users have had better luck. i m not honored to introduce the president of the united states. reporter: janice baker, the first person to sign up in delaware was facing the possibility of going without
hardware and the tech folks coming in, we feel that while it s been a bumpy three weeks, we ve got the resources on the ground now to make sure that as the president said today, anybody who wants to go to healthcare.gov can go through beginning to end and have a good consumer experience. that s what we re building to. december 15th is the date you need to be signed up, if you want to have insurance starting on january 1st. march is the date you need to have been signed up, gotten insurance, if you don t want to pay the penalty. can you promise that the website will be fully functioning by either of those dates, december 15th or the march 2014 date? so jake, besides the improvements in the website that are going to continue throughout october into november, an important thing also to remember is that there are multiple pathways for folks that didn t exist before. the president mentioned one today in terms of the 1-800-318-2596 number.
you can get your questions answered by real people 24 hours a day in 150 different languages. the phone number for these call centers is 1-800-318- 2596. i want to repeat that 1-800-318-2596. wait times have averaged less than one minute so on the call centers. president obama in full sales jobs. march ha rah liasson national public radio. busy day at the white house. you were in the rose garden. what about this in the fallout that you are hearing over there in the white house where it s going? well, this is a big problem. they have to get this fixed. this is not just about the most significant legislative accomplishment of the obama