Story highlights Insurance insider: Those working on website didn't want to tell White House about issues 
 
 Republicans call for Sebelius to resign or get fired over the Obamacare website problems 
 
 The White House mounts a campaign to boost enrollment in 10 cities 
 
 Health insurance CEOs meet with administration officials, including Sebelius 
 
 Call it the Obamacare website fiasco, with the focus Wednesday on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after she told CNN that President Barack Obama knew nothing of the problem before it became evident starting on October 1. 
 
 Sebelius headed to the White House for an afternoon meeting with insurance industry executives, then was scheduled to leave town to participate with other officials in what the administration calls a "grass-roots effort" to boost enrollment in Obama's signature health care reform system. 
 
 Republican opponents seeking to undermine the 2010 Affordable Care Act call for Sebelius to be fired for the website problems in the program overseen by her department. 
 
 They also want to delay the deadline for people to obtain health coverage under the law or face a fine, with some congressional Democrats joining that call. 
 
 Here are the latest developments: 
 
 Insurance CEOs meet with officials 
 
 The CEOs of several major insurance companies -- including the heads of Aetna, WellPoint and Humana -- met Wednesday with top U.S. officials about problems with the Obamacare website's rollout. 
 
 White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius led "a very productive discussion" that ended with an agreement that technical groups from insurers will work directly with government experts to address the issues, said a source in the room. 
 
 "The reality is that we have so much expertise they haven't tapped into enough," said the source. "These are people who have built these systems." 
 
 A well-placed industry insider told CNN that top health insurers were well aware of problems with the website's application process ahead of its October 1 launch, yet people involved in its creation downplayed the flaws. 
 
 "It's clear the folks working on this, in the (Obama) administration, gave a far rosier picture to people in the White House," the insider said. "No one wanted to go to the White House and say to the President that your significant legislative achievement may not go well." 
 
 The troubles include the difficulties that many people are having setting up accounts, as well as the fact that enrollment files being received by insurers are sometimes incomplete, have erroneous information or arrive in duplicate. 
 
 At the same time, some people have managed to successfully enroll, though the insider couldn't put an exact count on how many. 
 
 Fixing the problems 
 
 At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney gave reporters the most detailed account yet of steps being taken to address the website problems that have included long delays, difficulties signing in and incorrect information getting relayed to insurance companies. 
 
 "We are making fixes to the existing system," Carney said, noting that developers were increasing the bandwidth and "improving site architecture" to deal with the volume of visitors to HealthCare.gov 
 
 "We're substituting in hardware to make changes that make it more optimized," Carney added. "And we're improving database queries." 
 
 More tests are coming "now that we know what we're dealing with in terms of volume," he said. 
 
 Carney also said the Department of Health and Human Services will hold daily briefings, starting Thursday, to provide updates on progress being made to improve the website, one of four ways for people to enroll in the insurance exchanges set up under Obamacare. The others are by phone, in person at sites set up across the country, and by mail. 
 
 Signing up the uninsured 
 
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 Sebelius and other Cabinet secretaries as well as White House officials will head to cities across the country to encourage uninsured people to enroll in the new system. 
 
 "We are planning to deploy White House officials and Cabinet secretaries to the 10 cities across the country with the highest rates of uninsured Americans to do enrollment events and other grass-roots activities," an administration official said. "These cities and metropolitan areas include Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix/Tucson, North Jersey, Tampa, Orlando, Detroit and San Antonio." 
 
 Exclusive CNN interview 
 
 In the interview Tuesday with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Sebelius said Obama didn't hear that there might be problems with the sign-up portal for new exchanges under the health care law until it went live on October 1. 
 
 The site was supposed to make it simple for people to search and sign up for new health care policies, but instead it has been clunky and, at times, inoperable. 
 
 She attributed some problems to "extremely high" volume, saying nearly 20 million people came to the HealthCare.gov website in the first three weeks after its launch. 
 
 Of those, about 500,000 created accounts on the website, far below the millions that the administration hopes to eventually sign up in the six-month open enrollment period that ends on March 31. 
 
 Administration officials also note that such sign-ups traditionally start slow as consumers shop around, with the most activity occurring in the final weeks and days before the final deadline. 
 
 Carney said Obama knew there would be "glitches" and said ahead of time there would be problems in the rollout, but "there is no question that we did not anticipate the scale of problems with the website." 
 
 Republicans said the Sebelius interview showed the President didn't know what was going on with the law nicknamed for him. 
 
 Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus issued a sharply worded statement on the latest development. 
 
 "Either Secretary Sebelius is lying to protect President Obama or the President needs to get control of his signature health care law," he said. 
 
 Tech surge 
 
 Sebelius said she is bringing in tech experts from Silicon Valley, as well as acting Office of Management Budget Director Jeff Zients, to try to fix website problems that have included long delays, the inability to enroll and bad information relayed to insurers. 
 
 Asked why the leading experts were only getting involved now, instead of before the website launch, Sebelius said of the contractors and agencies responsible for the project: "We (had) hoped that they had their 'A-Team' on the table" from the start. 
 
 For now, she said, "we want new eyes and ears," adding that "we want to make sure that we get all the questions on the table, that we get all the answers and accelerate the fix as quickly as possible." 
 
 Republicans already are challenging the concept, calling it a "money surge" and seeking information from some of the outside experts about what they are supposed to do. 
 
 In letters Wednesday to five technology companies -- Verizon Enterprise Inc., Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Expedia -- House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa of California asked for details of what involvement, if any, they have in the surge. 
 
 "Despite the President's assertion that 'we're well into a tech surge,' neither the White House nor (the Department of Health and Human Services) is providing additional details about which private sector companies have been engaged or whether they are being engaged through the appropriate procurement processes," Issa said. 
 
 His letters asked the companies for all their communications with the agencies involved in the health care reform effort as well as with the Office of Management and Budget and Obama's executive office. 
 
 Congressional inquiries 
 
 At least two committees in the GOP-led House have scheduled hearings this week and next to investigage the rollout problems. 
 
 "Clearly there's problems with the website, but I would argue that the problems go much further than that," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Wednesday. 
 
 Officials from the contractors hired to create the website, including CGI, Serco, and Equifax, will appear on Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with Sebelius scheduled to testify at another panel hearing next week. 
 
 Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee has a hearing set for next week with the head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, a division of the Health and Human Services department that oversees Obamacare reforms. 
 
 One question certain to come up is why the rollout wasn't postponed after warnings in prelaunch tests that the website would fail. Sebelius told CNN that further delaying health coverage for Americans who need it was not an option. 
 
 "There are people in this country who have waited for decades for affordable health coverage for themselves and their families," she said. 
 
 Meanwhile, administration officials will brief House Democrats about the health care law's implementation on Wednesday, which caused their Republican counterparts to demand their own briefing. There was no immediate word on a separate session for the GOP. 
 
 A third committee sent a letter to the 11 HealthCare.gov contractors requesting documents, meeting lists, and all communications with the Obama administration on the project. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave the firms two days to respond. 
 
 Delay of game 
 
 Conservative Republicans who forced the 16-day government shutdown by linking a funding measure to demands to dismantle or defund Obamacare now want to delay the creation of market exchanges -- a key component of the reforms. 
 
 The Obamacare exchanges create large pools of buyers to make coverage more affordable for the almost 50 million Americans without insurance. 
 
 Robust enrollment is vital to the program's success. The exchange effort also depends heavily on attracting younger, healthier participants, who would tax the health care system less but still pay premiums. That would help insurers offer lower rates to older Americans with more health care needs. 
 
 If younger people don't sign up, rates won't increase immediately but It could cause insurers to raise them in the future or drop out of the exchanges because they cannot make the economics work. 
 
 Carney said GOP calls to delay the individual mandate that requires people to obtain health coverage lacked "a sincere desire to improve the system" and instead were intended to undermine Obamacare. 
 
 However, some congressional Democrats -- especially those facing tough election battles next year -- are getting restless about the Obamacare problems. 
 
 Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas called for extending the enrollment period, while Rep. John Barrow of Georgia wants to delay the individual mandate. 
 
 The Obamacare exchanges are expected to include about 15% of Americans, with the rest of the insured population covered by employer or other group plans. 
 
 Trumping Sebelius 
 
 Republicans, including House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, also call for Sebelius to lose her job over the rollout problems. 
 
 Some Democrats also call for accountability, but they say the situation should first get fixed before assessing blame and firing anyone responsible. 
 
 Sebelius said she works "at the pleasure of the President" and is committed to her job. 
 
 "I think my job is to get this fully implemented and to get the website working right," she told Gupta. ||||| The Obama administration said Wednesday night that it will give Americans who buy health insurance through the new online marketplaces an extra six weeks to obtain coverage before they incur a penalty. 
 
 The announcement means that those who buy coverage through the exchange will have until March 31 to sign up for a plan, according to an official with the Department of Health and Human Services. 
 
 Administration officials said that the rejiggered deadline is unrelated to the many technical problems that have emerged with the Web site, HealthCare.gov, in its first three weeks. Instead, they said, it is designed to clear up a timing confusion about the 2010 law, which for the first time requires most Americans to buy health coverage or face a penalty. 
 
 Under the law, health plans available through the new federal or state marketplaces will start Jan. 1, but the open enrollment period runs through the end of March. The law also says that people will be fined only if they do not have coverage for three months in a row. The question has been this: Do people need to be covered by March 31, or merely to have signed up by then, given that insurance policies have a brief lag before they take effect? 
 
 The administration made clear Wednesday night that people who buy coverage at any point during the open enrollment period will not pay a penalty. 
 
 An administration official named Jeff Zients has been tasked with fixing the issues with Obamacare's new website. But who is Jeff Zients? (The Washington Post) 
 
 It is the latest sign that the health-care law remains a moving target, even after the launch of the federal insurance marketplace, which has faced myriad problems that have frustrated many people trying to sign up for coverage. 
 
 Contractors and others have begun assigning blame for the Web site troubles, and the fault-finding will get its first extensive public airing Thursday, when four of the contractors involved in the project will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 
 
 In the written testimony submitted to the panel in advance, CGI Federal, the main contractor on the project, takes partial blame for the site’s shortcomings. But it also notes that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within HHS, was the “ultimate responsible party for the end-to-end performance” of the site. And it blames a piece created by another contractor, Quality Software Services (QSSI), for creating the initial bottleneck. 
 
 QSSI built part of the online registration system that crashed shortly after the Oct. 1 launch and locked out many people for days. In a statement, the company counters that it was not the only one responsible for the registration system, which is now working. 
 
 “There are a number of other components to the registration system, all of which must work together seamlessly to ensure registration,” said Matt Stearns, a spokesman for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company for QSSI. “The [QSSI-built] tool has been working well for weeks.” 
 
 But both contractors are likely to be taken to task by Republican and Democratic committee members. They were among the vendors who testified at a Sept. 10 Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that their parts of the project were moving along well, and that the Web site would be ready Oct. 1. Those assurances are likely to be questioned Thursday. 
 
 The hearing is the first of many planned by Republicans, who are expected not only to question the contractors but also to examine the administration’s management of the project. Some Republicans have called for the ouster of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is scheduled to appear before the panel next Wednesday. 
 
 President Obama and his deputies have given no indication that they are considering replacing Sebelius. White House press secretary Jay Carney has consistently defended her, and officials have been focusing on fixing the site rather than assessing blame for its defects. 
 
 The administration, however, has sought to assure jittery business leaders and insurers that can fix the enrollment system. On Tuesday, Vice President Biden told business supporters in a conference call that the nation’s best technology minds were working on the site and urged them to “stick with us.” And on Wednesday, top Obama advisers met with insurance executives to discuss system repairs. 
 
 CMS had enormous responsibility, and was charged with ensuring that there would be a mechanism for millions of Americans to easily sign up for coverage in time for some of the law’s main benefits to begin Jan. 1. Officials have said ease of signing up is critical to the administration meeting its goal of getting 7 million uninsured people — many of them young and healthy — to sign up. 
 
 But the agency assumed an outsize role in the management of the project, coordinating the activities of 55 contractors rather than hiring a separate firm to serve as a systems integrator. That is likely to be a key issue during Thursday’s hearing. 
 
 People familiar with the project have said the time frame was too tight for adequate testing, which one source said would have highlighted the problems. 
 
 There also have been inconsistencies about how and when the decision was made to scrap a key feature of the Web site, with QSSI telling congressional investigators that it did not know about the major change until the site’s launch. But in the written testimony the company plans to deliver Thursday, it says it found out shortly before the rollout date. 
 
 Republicans have been eager to learn more about how and when the decision was made to end that feature. The feature would have allowed people to browse plans and rates before signing up for an account. Technology experts have said the last-minute decision to stop it put too much pressure on a different tool that was set up to handle a small number of simultaneous users, crashing the site. 
 
 People familiar with the project give conflicting accounts of the reason for the move. The decision was made at a two-day meeting in late September to which CMS invited all its major contractors. According to one person familiar with the project, CGI gave a presentation that convinced CMS officials that the shopping feature was not ready. 
 
 Another person close to the project had a slightly different account, saying that CGI believed that the feature was, in fact, ready. 
 
 Republican lawmakers have alleged that the administration made the change to hide the cost of insurance plans from consumers. 
 
 “Evidence is mounting that political considerations motivated the decision,” said a letter sent to two administration officials Tuesday from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, including Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). 
 
 Lena H. Sun, Ed O’Keefe and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
– Good news for procrastinators: Americans will now have an extra month and a half to get health insurance before facing a penalty under ObamaCare, meaning they won't face a fine if they sign up for a plan by March 31. The six-week delay (a change of tune for the White House) isn't because of website difficulties, but because people weren't certain when the penalty came into effect, officials tell the Washington Post. It hadn't been clear whether Americans simply had to sign up for a plan before the penalty took effect, or whether their coverage itself had to begin by that date, the Post and MarketWatch explain. Because of the way health insurance is processed, Americans would have needed to apply by Feb. 15 for coverage to kick in March 31; now, people won't be penalized as long as they've signed up by March 31, in which case their coverage would start May 1. Meanwhile, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is preparing for hearings on website issues beginning today. Four contractors will testify; Kathleen Sebelius will do the same next Wednesday. CGI Federal handled the lion's share of the project, and has already acknowledged some responsibility for the problems in a letter to lawmakers—but it asserted that the health department agency Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was ultimately responsible for the site's "end-to-end performance"; it also points the finger at contractor Quality Software Services for registration problems that have now been fixed. QSS says it's not the only one to blame. An insurance industry source tells CNN that "top health insurers" knew full well about the website's flaws before it launched.