US President Barack Obama. Photo: Reuters

President Barack Obama is frustrated by the problems in the roll out of his signature healthcare reform and the administration intends to fix them, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said yesterday.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Lew said the administration was determined to repair the technical glitches in the online insurance exchanges that are a central part of the programme known as ‘Obamacare,’ which was launched on October 1.

“I think that there’s no one more frustrated than the President at the difficulty in the website,” Lew said. He said the US Department of Health and Human Services “has got plans to fix this and it has to fix this. It has to be done right.”

Fresh from the US budget battles, Obama today will turn his attention to convincing Americans that the healthcare programme can be fixed despite the significant roll out problems.

The President told aides in a recent Oval Office meeting that the administration had to take responsibility for the fact that the website was not ready on time.

He is expected to address that in his remarks today.

Late on Saturday, the White House reported nearly half a million Americans had applied for health insurance through the federal and state exchanges provided by Obamacare.

That step was part of a new damage control effort by the administration in the face of intensifying criticism from Republicans over the error-filled launch.

Programme’s website hobbled by technical problems

Administration officials are expected to travel the country in the coming weeks to encourage people to sign up to the exchanges, targeting areas where there are high percentages of the uninsured, according to one official.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expected to provide private health coverage to an estimated seven million uninsured Americans through the new online marketplaces which opened for enrolment on October 1.

But the website healthcare.gov, the administration’s online portal for consumers in 36 states, was hobbled by technical problems – including error messages, garbled text and delays loading pages.

Administration officials blame the problems partly on an unexpectedly high volume of 14.6 million visitors in its first 10 days.

Republicans in Congress have chastised Obama’s top health adviser, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, for declining their invitation to testify about the glitches to an oversight panel on October 24.

But many Republicans were criticising the programme long before its rocky launch. A 16-day partial government shutdown that ended last week was precipitated by Republican demands to delay or defund Obamacare.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz who led that campaign vowed on Sunday to step-up his opposition, even though his tactics have been slammed as a mistake by members of his own party.

“I would do anything and will continue to do anything to stop train wreck that is Obamacare,” Cruz said on ABC’s This Week.

Lew said the programme’s test would be in January, when the actual coverage starts for people who have enrolled by December 15.