Evan Vucci/AP
In New York State, 174,000 eligible people have applied for Obamacare insurance.
WASHINGTON — A White House offensive to shore up support for Obamacare failed Wednesday to prevent a series of high-profile Democratic defections from the party line.
Citing the troubled rollout of the principal Obamacare website, three more Democratic senators called for an extension of the March 31 deadline under the Affordable Care Act for most Americans to have health insurance.
Those senators — Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Lousiana — are up for re-election next year.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who also is up for re-election, made a similiar proposal on Tuesday.
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And a fifth Democrat, conservative Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, called for more dramatic action — delaying the so-called “individual mandate” for Americans to own health insurance for an entire year.
The Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday that the problem-plagued website HealthCare.gov didn’t get enough testing, especially at a high-user volume, before going live on Oct. 1.
It blamed a compressed time frame for meeting the Oct. 1 deadline to open the insurance markets.
The administration said technicians were deep into the job of fixing major computer snags but provided no timetable.
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The White House pushed back on Republican calls for Health and Humans Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign over the flawed launch, but a growing number of Democrats said heads should roll.
“It’s really inexcusable,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx).
“I’d like to see somebody lose their job over this,” Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who represents suburbs north of New York, told a constituent on a telephone town hall Tuesday night. “I think it’s outrageous.”
Rep. Richard Nolan (D-Minn.) was more blunt. “The President needs to man up, find out who was responsible and fire them,” he told The Associated Press.
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House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) advised against extending the deadline to have insurance.
“I think we should try to fix what we have, move forward with the deadline we have,” she said. “What we want to do is fix it and go forward with it, not make policies that are predicated on its not working.”
The computer problems are casting an embarassing shadow over the program, and giving Republicans new ammunition to attack it.
“We’ve got the whole threat of Obamacare continuing to hang over our economy like a wet blanket,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.
The first of several hearings is set for Thursday in the Republican-led House, where lawmakers are ready to pounce on the contractors who built the troubled online enrollment system.
dfriedman@nydailynews.com
With News Wire Services
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