Medicare chief apologizes for 'Obamacare' woes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stressing that improvements are happening daily, the senior Obama official closest to the administration's malfunctioning health care website apologized today for problems that have kept Americans from successfully signing up for coverage.

"I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should," Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner said as she began her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. It was the most direct mea culpa yet from a top administration official.

The first senior official to publicly answer questions from lawmakers, Tavenner is being grilled not only on what went wrong with HealthCare.gov, but also whether lawmakers can trust promises to have things running efficiently by the end of November.

She firmly refused to provide current enrollment numbers, saying repeatedly they will not be available until mid-November.

Tavenner's appearance follows the testimony last week of outside contractors who said there wasn't enough time to test the complex online enrollment system. It froze up the day it was launched, Oct. 1.