WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius acknowledged Wednesday that it would be possible for a convicted felon to become an Obamacare navigator — one of the workers responsible for helping people deal with the ins and outs of the healthcare law. 
 
 “Isn’t it true there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive personal information from the individuals they help to sign-up up for the Affordable Care Act?” asked Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn at a Senate Finance Committee hearing at which Sebelius was testifying. 
 
 “That is true,” Sebelius replied. “States could have an additional background check and other features, but it is not part of the federal requirement.” 
 
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 “So a convicted felon could be a navigator and acquire sensitive personal information?” Cornyn asked. 
 
 “That is possible,” Sebelius acknowledged. “We have contracts with organizations and they have taken the responsibility to screen the individual navigators and make sure they are sufficiently trained for the job.” 
 
 Asked by Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson if they would be open to a federal requirement for background checks, Sebelius said it was up to congress, but that they would certainly look at it. 
 
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 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted Wednesday that it was possible convicted felons could be hired as ObamaCare ‘navigators,’ giving them access to personal information like Social Security numbers and addresses of anyone signing up for the program. 
 
 Sebelius made the admission in an exchange with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., during a Senate Finance Committee hearing. It was the second time in a week Sebelius was on Capitol Hill, forced to defend the problem-plagued ObamaCare website. 
 
 “Isn’t it true that there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check,” Cornyn asked her. 
 
 “That is true,” Sebelius answered. “States could add in additional background checks and other features, but it is not part of the federal requirement.” 
 
 Cornyn pressed, “So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual unbeknownst to them?” 
 
 Sebelius answered, “This is possible.” 
 
 The nearly three-hour hearing had Sebelius once again shouldering much of the blame for the rocky rollout of the ACA, commonly referred to as ObamaCare. Last week she testified before a House panel on the growing concerns about President Obama’s landmark legislation. 
 
 On Wednesday, Sebelius also acknowledged that the early enrollment figures for ObamaCare scheduled to be released next week will be “very low.” 
 
 Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, demanded monthly progress reports from her. 
 
 “No more excuses,” Hatch told her. “No more spin, just give us the truth.” 
 
 During her opening statement Sebelius said, “a number of fixes have already been completed” to the glitch-ridden website HealthCare.gov. 
 
 “Two weeks ago, the tech team put into place enhanced monitoring tools for HealthCare.gov, enabling us to get a high-level picture of the marketplace application responding, and to measure how changes improve user experience on the site.” 
 
 On the panel is Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was one of the architects of the 2010 law. 
 
 Until now, Baucus has been a very vocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act, but even he has had his share of doubt in recent days over the HealthCare.gov site. 
 
 Specifically, Baucus has a problem with security testing of the site that could potentially expose millions of Americans to cyberfraud or identity theft. 
 
 Documents have surfaced that seem to indicate Obama administration officials cut corners on security testing while rushing to meet a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline to launch online health insurance markets. 
 
 The administration has been struggling in recent days to knock back a wave of criticism that has been mounting since the rollout. 
 
 While the White House has promised the site would be up and glitch-free by Nov. 30, Baucus challenged Sebelius to beat the deadline. 
 
 “You said recently that you expect the website to be running smoothly for a majority of users by late November,” he said. “There is no room for error. You must meet -- and I prefer you beat -- that deadline.” 
 
 The last time Sebelius testified before a House committee, she fell on the sword, personally apologizing for the failures. 
 
 “Hold me accountable for the debacle,” she said. “I’m responsible.” 

 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius acknowledged on Wednesday that the initial enrollment numbers through the new healthcare exchanges will be “quite low.” [WATCH VIDEO] 
 
 
 
 In testimony to the Senate Finance Committee, Sebelius said “the struggles people have had getting access to the site” will contribute to a disappointing first month and a half. 
 
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 “I’m hoping that with the site improvement we’ll see more robust numbers, but until the site is really improved … we’re going to have a struggle getting significant numbers to sign up,” she said.The administration has faced growing calls to provide enrollment figures, which it has so far refused to disclose, saying the early stages of enrollment make it impossible to provide reliable or accurate data.On Tuesday, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner said the agency will publish Affordable Care Act enrollment data next week.In her testimony, Tavenner said she hoped to have 800,000 enrollees by the end of November, but didn’t say whether that number includes new Medicaid and state exchange enrollees, or rather was the amount she hoped to get through the federal exchanges.Sebelius on Wednesday said next week’s data would break down the numbers by how many have enrolled in the state and federal exchanges, and how many have gone into Medicaid or private plans. 
 
 The HHS had previously refused to say how the numbers would be presented. A single sign-up number would have provided little insight into how the enrollment effort is proceeding because it would also include Medicaid enrollments that aren’t moving through the federal ObamaCare portal. 
 
 
 
 House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released documents last week showing there was only a trickle of successful enrollments in the federal healthcare exchanges in the days after the ObamaCare website went live on Oct. 1. 
 
 
 
 The documents show six enrollments on the morning of Oct. 2; 100 by that afternoon; and 248 on the morning of Oct. 3. 
 
 
 
 The administration has noted that the Massachusetts healthcare exchange, implemented by then-Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in 2006, had only 123 enrollees in the first month. Tavenner said she expects slow early enrollment for those seeking insurance by Jan. 1, followed by an influx of young and healthy consumers who will bombard the exchanges before the March 31 enrollment deadline. 

 WASHINGTON — Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said Wednesday that the government needed to fix hundreds of problems with the website for the federal health insurance marketplace, but she categorically rejected bipartisan calls to delay parts of the new health care law. 
 
 She made her comments at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee hours after the Obama administration disclosed that the chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would retire. His office supervised the creation of the troubled website. 
 
 The official, Tony Trenkle, will step down on Nov. 15 “to take a position in the private sector,” according to an email circulated among agency employees. He has supervised the spending of $2 billion a year on information technology products and services, including the development of the website. 
 
 Mr. Trenkle, reached by telephone on Wednesday, declined to discuss his plans. “I can’t speak with you,” he said. 
 
 His retirement is part of a management shake-up announced by Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer of the Medicare agency, who was herself deeply involved in major decisions about the insurance marketplace. 
 
 Even as Ms. Sebelius testified about progress in repairing the website, HealthCare.gov, agency officials were reporting new problems on Wednesday. 
 
 “The site is performing slowly,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Some users have difficulty logging in and receive error messages.” 
 
 Ms. Bataille said it was hard to pinpoint the cause because different consumers had experienced different problems. Some people who have created password-protected accounts have said that they cannot get into their accounts to shop for insurance. Under the new health care law, most Americans will be required to have coverage next year. 
 
 The online marketplace, or exchange, has been plagued with problems since it opened on Oct. 1. 
 
 Ms. Sebelius said officials had a list of “a couple of hundred functional fixes” that had to be made so the website, HealthCare.gov, would work smoothly for most users by Nov. 30, a deadline set by the administration. 
 
 “We’re not where we need to be,” Ms. Sebelius said. “It’s a pretty aggressive schedule to get to the entire punch list by the end of November.” 
 
 With many people unable to obtain coverage through the website, lawmakers in both parties have suggested extending the open enrollment period or delaying the financial penalties for people who go without insurance. But Ms. Sebelius refused to consider those proposals. 
 
 “Delaying the Affordable Care Act would not delay people’s cancer or diabetes or Parkinson’s disease,” she said. “It would not delay the need for mental health services or cholesterol screenings or prenatal care.” 
 
 “For millions of Americans, delay is not an option,” Ms. Sebelius said. “People’s lives depend on this.” 
 
 Ms. Sebelius said she was accountable for what she described as “a miserable five weeks” and the “excruciatingly awful” debut of the insurance website. 
 
 But she said: “There is an even higher level of accountability — accountability to the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling Americans who deserve better health care. The impact on the lives of everyday people is getting lost.” 
 
 The chief architect of the health care law, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, urged Ms. Sebelius to speed up repairs to the website. 
 
 At a hearing in April, Mr. Baucus told Ms. Sebelius that he foresaw “a huge train wreck” because the administration had done little to educate consumers or employers. He asked for periodic updates, and he said Wednesday that the administration’s responses had been “totally unsatisfactory.” 
 
 Mr. Baucus asked if it would be feasible to shut down HealthCare.gov and make all the necessary fixes at once. “Why just keep limping along?” he asked. 
 
 Ms. Sebelius said it was better to make the fixes “on an ongoing basis,” while the system was running, or in the middle of the night, when it was scheduled to be down for repairs. 
 
 She said that the first official enrollment numbers, to be released next week, were “likely to be quite low, given the struggles that people have had getting access to the site and getting information.” 
 
 The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, said he had issued a subpoena to the Medicare agency to get information on the number of people enrolled. 
 
 In late September, Ms. Snyder and Mr. Trenkle, the information officer who is retiring, signed an internal memo acknowledging that security controls for the federal website had not been fully tested. They endorsed a six-month plan to reduce the risk that personal information might be inappropriately disclosed. 
 
 Documents released Wednesday night by House investigators suggest that Obama administration officials knew even before the marketplaces opened for business on Oct. 1 that the computer systems were not going to be able to handle anywhere near the anticipated demand. The “testing bulletin” suggested the website as of Sept. 30 could handle only about 1,100 users at a time, even though officials had said it should have been able to accommodate perhaps as many as 60,000, according to the documents, released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
– Kathleen Sebelius was on Capitol Hill for another grilling today, this time from the Senate Finance Committee, in which she defied calls from both sides of the aisle to delay parts of the implementation of the ObamaCare. "Delaying the Affordable Care Act would not delay people's cancer or diabetes or Parkinson's disease," she said, according to the New York Times. "For millions of Americans, delay is not an option." (Though the Hill notes that in another exchange Sebelius said initial enrollment would be "quite low.") Lawmakers took turns complaining about the law's rollout. Orrin Hatch accused Sebelius of being "untruthful" when she said implementation of the law was on track. In an exchange being touted by conservative sites Fox News and the Daily Caller, John Cornyn pointed out that the government didn't require criminal background checks for "navigators," the support staff who help people register. "So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual?" Cornyn asked. "This is possible," Sebelius replied.