slow, people have been getting stuck during the application process and i think it's fair to say that nobody's more frustrated by that than i am." he also stated that a "tech surge" was underway to fix the problems. the president additionally pointed out that people could instead apply through a call center or in person. white house press secretary jay carney said more time was needed to get the website working properly. carney also hinted that if the problems remained unresolved for such a long time that it prevented people from meeting their legal obligation to obtain insurance in time for the february deadline, the legal penalty for not obtaining insurance would not be applicable because the obamacare law states that if affordable care is not available, the penalty will not be payable. so, shortly after healthcare.gov's launch, the problems still did not affect the legal requirement for americans to have health insurance by december 15, which remained on the books as stated. however, on october 23, the effective legal deadline for applying for health insurance via healthcare.gov without getting a penalty via the individual mandate was extended to march 31, 2014, possibly because of the problems with healthcare.gov and some of the state healthcare exchanges (but without a de jure explanation as such given). the obama administration appointed a contractor, quality software services, inc (qssi), to coordinate the work of the fixing of the website problems. the company had already worked on the website's back-end before the website went live. as stated before, prior to the launch, the centers for medicare and medicaid services (cms) had been playing the role of coordinator, but critics charged that it was ill-suited for such a systems integration role. the administration appointed jeffrey zients to act as their adviser in the matter. on october 25, zients promised, in a conference call to the media, that the site would be working well "for the vast majority of users" by the end of november. he also claimed that 90% of visitors are now able to complete the account-creation process and actually used healthcare.gov to compare plans. perhaps the largest issue he faces, as he acknowledged in the call, are the error-riddled reports given to insurers, often messing up basic details such as an individual's gender. as stated before, healthcare.gov problems have persisted even weeks after the launch. for example, a networking failure error at the related data services hub killed the website's functionality again october 28. this occurred the exact day after health and human services head kathleen sebelius had highlighted the design of that data hub as a government success. however, state-based exchanges have mostly worked well in registering individuals during this time period, with cnn.com describing them as "largely error free". a large number of technical fixes took place through october and november, with an npr.org report later remarking that the website seemed to be "working more smoothly." yet, on november 13, the obama administration revealed that fewer than 27,000 people had signed up to private health insurance through the site. by november 30, more than 137,000 people had obtained health insurance through the federal website. that figure represented a strong increase, but enrollment figures were still vastly below past u.s. government forecasts. accenture was chosen to replace cgi group as the lead contractor for the website in january 2014. a large issue with future enrollments is dealing with the accuracy of healthcare.gov information sent to insurance companies. as stated in an npr.org article citing "continuing problems" with healthcare.gov, about one in ten enrollment notices have contained a significant error. 2015 open enrollment period enrollment for the 2015 year through the federal government website, which serves 37 states with no enrollment websites, started at midnight of nov 15, 2014, and ended on february 15, 2015. the united states department of health and human services reported a relatively smooth experience for users. however, scattered reports of problems, such as blocking login access and long wait times, were encountered. in one case a call center worker told a reporter that resolving their issue may take five to seven business days. in january usa today reported that more health plans were offered in about 75% of counties for 2015, and while average insurance premium increased less than the average 10% annual jumps for plans before the affordable care act, there were still some very large increases. state and federal health care exchanges have enrolled more than 9.5 million people, but the numbers vary. florida accounted for almost a seventh of all people who have selected plans on the exchanges. texas, however, has the largest share of uninsured adults while enrollments lag. 2016 open enrollment period the open enrollment period for 2016 began on november 1, 2015 and ended on january 31, 2016. fake websites before healthcare.gov went online, there was concern about misleading or fake websites at the state or local level. in early december 2013, a third fake health insurance site was shut down in kentucky. california democratic party politicians condemned a california republican party-created website which resembled the state's official obamacare sign-up website but provided political criticisms of the law instead of insurance coverage. privately-operated exchanges partly in response to the healthcare.gov outages, a number of privately operated services have launched to provide tools for consumers to calculate subsidy eligibility, as well as research, compare, and enroll for plans examples include healthsherpa, stride health and healthpocket. in november 2013, healthsherpa was launched by a team of coders in san francisco and received media attention for its comparative ease of use. critics pointed out that by focusing only on providing information, the healthsherpa site did not resolve some of the most difficult problems, including allowing consumers to actually enroll in a plan. stride health launched in 2014, and focused on simplifying health care enrollment by recommending plans to its users based on their data and offering a full service team on the phone who can help its users enroll in plans. the company saw early success through partnerships with a number of large companies. by march 2014, healthsherpa had become a full-service broker allowing users to enroll directly on the healthsherpa site. security in july 2014 a hacker broke into a test server for healthcare.gov and uploaded malicious software. by the end of 2014 healthcare.gov had apparently rewritten a large portion of the site and moved important functions "server-side," instead of being executed client-side in the user's web browser. data privacy the initial launch of healthcare.gov was plagued with security concerns and lead to information security experts publicly testifying before the congressional committee on science, space and technology and others speaking to the government about security vulnerabilities in healthcare.gov. david kennedy was able to locate 70,000 health records that were supposed to be private, but were publicly available via a google dork. there are concerns that personal information put into the website may not be secure in the way that users expect: on january 24, 2015 kevin counihan, the c.e.o. of healthcare.gov, addressed concerns about privacy on the federal website. he said they launched a review of their privacy policies, contracts for third-party tools and url construction. he said that healthcare.gov had encrypted a url that contains data on users’ income and age, and whether they were pregnant. on jan. 20, 2015, the associated press reported in an article titled: "government health care website quietly sharing personal data" that healthcare.gov is providing access to enrollees' personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising. the data may include age, income, zip code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. it may also include a computer's internet address, which can identify a person's name or address when combined with other information collected by data brokers and online advertising firms. there is no evidence that this data has been misused, but connections to dozens of third-party tech firms were documented. some of these companies were also collecting highly specific information. copyright infringement in october 2013, the weekly standard reported the site was violating the copyrights of sprymedia, a uk-based technology company, by utilizing their software with the copyright notices removed. the software was datatables, a free and open-source plugin for jquery designed to improve presentation of data, and was dual-licensed under the gnu gpl version 2 and a modified 3-clause bsd license. healthcare.gov subsequently rectified the license violation by providing appropriate attribution, license and copyright notices. reception and possible ramifications kathleen sebelius formally accepts her nomination as secretary with president obama by her side. the technical problems were heavily criticized, and republican representatives sent president obama a list of questions, demanding explanations for what went wrong. some republicans called for the secretary of health and human services, kathleen sebelius, to be fired, because she oversaw the planning for the site launch. former white house press secretary robert gibbs described the technical problems as "excruciatingly embarrassing", and he said that some people should be fired. scott amey of the project on government oversight pointed to the development cost ceiling being raised from $93.7 million to $292 million, and he asked: "where was the contract oversight?" american conservative commentators such as national review writers jonah goldberg and mark steyn have argued that the website's launch was a disaster that presages larger problems throughout the entire law, with goldberg asserting that "the republicans who insisted that this monstrosity had to be delayed are looking just a little bit more reasonable with every passing tick." in a statement, the republican national committee (rnc) responded to president obama's comments that the "tech surge" was code for a "spending surge" and will waste millions of dollars. said statement also read, "the federal bureaucracy has proven itself too slow, too bloated, too incompetent, and too outdated to manage america’s health care." speaker of the house john boehner, a republican representative from ohio, told reporters that throughout november "more americans are going to lose their health care than are going to sign up." ohio governor john kasich stated on nbc's meet the press program on october 27 that the roll-out has "got everybody just shaking their heads". he also added that it seemed highly likely that most ohioans would pay more on the healthcare.gov plans. kentucky governor steve beshear counter-argued that while the website didn't work well yet that it soon would since healthcare.gov represents "the future of health care", and he commented as well, "you know, the advice i would give the news media and the critics up here is take a deep breath." the daily show host jon stewart notably lampooned the healthcare.gov controversy during an interview with sebelius. he jokingly challenged her to an online race: "i'm going to try and download every movie ever made, and you're going to try to sign up for obamacare, and we'll see which happens first." she also faced grilling over the obama administration's opposition to an extended individual mandate delay. sebelius later said in response to criticism, "the majority of people calling for me to resign i would say are people who i don't work for and who do not want this program to work in the first place". she also said, "i have had frequent conversations with the president and i have committed to him that my role is to get the program up and running, and we will do just that." her popularity in her native kansas where she previously served as governor, according to university of kansas political science professor burdett loomis, has spurred her on to stay on. u.s. house minority leader nancy pelosi, a democratic representative from california, commented about the controversy that she feels optimistic about things being fixed, saying "i have faith in technology" as well as "while there are glitches, there are solutions, as well." democrats in congress have accused republican critics of healthcare.gov of acting in bad faith. "we want the process to improve, but we're not interested in torpedoing the process," said representative xavier becerra, another democrat from california and chairman of the house democratic caucus. republican senator marco rubio has drafted legislation as a result of the controversy to delay the individual mandate. the proposed legislation has drawn scattered democratic support. professor and author victor lombardi commented to bloomberg businessweek that the website's issues "don’t sound catastrophic", and