‘Uh oh!’: Obamacare website CRASHES as HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius holds Florida photo-op

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services and the White House’s chief Obamacare cheerleader, was left ashen-faced during a photo-op on Tuesday when volunteers helping Floridians use healthcare.gov were faced with a website that didn’t work.

While reporters trailed her during a tour of a Miami hospital, one noticed that the site was crashing.

‘The screen says, “I’m sorry but the system is temporarily down,”‘ CBS-TV4 reporter Brian Andrews told Sebelius, who could only mutter a surprised, ‘Uh oh.’

The unlucky volunteer Obamacare ‘navigator’ operating the laptop told Sebelius that her marquee website still displays that message a lot, even after weeks of assurances from the Obama administration that help is on the way.

‘That happens every day,’ the woman said, before insisting that ‘it must mean a lot of people are on there trying to get coverage.’

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The federal government revealed last week that just 27,000 Americans were able to use the website between Oct. 1 and Nov. 2 to select new health insurance plans. That number included people who left their orders in virtual shopping carts without paying for them.

With TV cameras in tow, the final insult came as a Miami resident told Sebelius about his own experience trying to work with a navigator to sign up online.

‘It went down three times,’ the man said, ‘but we’re just going to keep trying.’

Sebelius told reporters that she has been the first to acknowledge that end-to-end testing of healthcare.gov ‘should have been a longer period of time’ before its October 1 rollout, which has made the Obama White House an international butt of jokes.

‘Had I known then what I know now, things would have been different,’ she said.

Consumers ‘are frustrated with the web experience they had,’ she agreed, ‘but they are eager enough to get coverage that they are going to return over and over again.’

Red-faced: Sebelius offered no apologies, but sympathized with Floridians who were out of luck as the website crashed

Earlier in the day, Sebelius had told the Associated Press that the latest upcoming deadline might provide her with yet another very public regret.

‘The 30th of November is not a magic “go, no go” date,’ she insisted. ‘It is a work of constant improvement. We have some very specific things we know we need to complete by the 30th and that punch list is getting knocked out every week.’

The administration has promised that by the 30th the ‘vast majority’ of Americans would find healthcare.gov in working order. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, however, said Monday that an 80-percent success rate would be satisfactory.

But Sebelius herself told Congress on Oct. 30 that Americans would have ‘an optimally functioning website’ by the end of November.

And on Nov. 5, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testified that healthcare.gov would be ‘fully functioning’ by that date.

Sebelius’ heavily orchestrated appearances Tuesday in Orlando and Miami featured sit-down interviews, in full view of cameras, with selected Floridians who consider their Obamacare experiences to be positive ones.

But one Miami couple demonstrated that all is not well, reaching the website’s application submission page before finding themselves frozen out.

‘Sorry, our system is down,’ the screen read, advising them to try again in a half-hour.

Sebelius continues to resist calls from some Republicans for her ouster, telling The Miami Herald on Tuesday that ‘the important thing is to finish the job that we started.’

That job, though, seems to have most Americans on edge.

A Gallup poll published Wednesday found that 63 per cent of Americans who have visited healthcare.gov describe their experience as negative, including 30 percent who call it ‘very negative.’