"Step number one, two, three, four, five and six is really getting the website fixed," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told both concerned and critical members of Senate Finance Committee, the birthplace of the Affordable Care Act, as Healthcare.gov's problems persisted five weeks after its go-live date.
"The rollout has been excruciatingly awful for way too many people," Sebelius said.
Montana Democrat Max Baucus, a key architect of the ACA, told Sebelius that "it's very clear to me that you're working as hard as you can to fix HealthCare.gov. Keep at it."
Baucus also called on Sebelius to be as transparent as possible in the process of diagnosing and treating the ailing insurance marketplace.
"We want to help you get this right. But it's a two-way street," he said. "The more you don't tell us, the greater the problems are going to be. The more you tell us, the good and bad, the more likely we are to go smoothly."
Baucus, among others, asked why HHS doesn't shut down the website until it's fully functional?
"We have asked that question a number of times," Sebelius said. "We've been advised that that actually doesn't help, that it's better to do routine upgrades. You don't gain much from just taking the whole system down for a week."
However, Sebelius acknowledged that the agency is risking alienating much-needed consumers. "Young folks have little patience with technology that doesn't work instantaneously."
And it's not just the website.
As has become routine in Capitol Hill hearings, Sebelius faced a number of critiques of the ACA, particularly the issue of health plan cancellations, but in the Senate with a far lesser degree of vehemency than in the House.
"These anecdotes have been repeated millions of times across the country, and it's a huge problem," said Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey. "The bill as it's designed does not keep those promises," he said, referring to President Obama's "If you like your insurance you can keep it" pledge.
"Are there any changes you want to recommend so that the promises that were made could in fact be kept?" Toomey asked Sebelius, hinting at legislative proposals that would let more of the now-cancelled, non-ACA compliant plans be "grandfathered" into the current system.
"What I really want to do is get the program up and running," she responded. "I don't think grandfathering prospectively can work very well since companies are now in the market with new plans."
The day before, Sebelius' second-in-command, CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner, responded to similar lawmaker concerns before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"I believe that there's been a crisis of confidence created in the dysfunctional nature of the website, the canceling of policies, and sticker shock from some people," Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski told Tavenner.
"We are seeing improvements each week, and by the end of November the experience on the site will be smooth for the vast majority of users," Tavenner said. "Users can now successfully create an account and continue through the full application and enrollment process."
Healthcare.gov can process 17,000 registrations per hour, "with almost no errors," Tavenner said.
Tavenner, like Sebelius, stuck to a positive message and reiterated the constant work that contractors, CMS officials and Obama Administration turnaround specialists are undertaking.
But just how much if any damage the website's shoddy rollout has done to the goal of robust enrollment and universal insurance remains to be seen.
CMS vowed to release enrollment data from both state and federal exchanges during the second week of November, Tavenner said. The nationwide target for the end of the month is 800,000.