White House: We’ll get ‘the numbers we need’ on ObamaCare

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday that the administration would enroll “the numbers we need” for ObamaCare to work, despite early technical problems that have limited the ability of uninsured consumers to sign up for coverage.

The press secretary’s declaration came after the House Oversight Committee revealed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services meeting notes from the opening days of the ObamaCare exchanges. According to the documents, only six enrollments occurred on the day the website launched, with just 248 logged through 48 hours.

{mosads}Congressional Budget Office estimates have assumed 7 million consumers will sign up for coverage on the exchanges — or an average of 39,000 per day for the six months that people can purchase coverage.

Carney acknowledged that some of the slow start could be attributed to the technical errors that have plagued the ObamaCare exchanges. Many Americans have been unable to sign up accounts on HealthCare.gov, or complete enrollment applications.

“By definition, when you have a website that isn’t functioning well, you’re going to have problems and we’ve owned up to that repeatedly,” Carney told CNN’s “New Day.”

But the press secretary said the White House “always expected enrollment figures to be low,” pointing to Massachusetts’s early struggles to entice individuals there to purchase insurance.

“When it comes to low numbers early in the enrollment stage, I think we have to look at Massachusetts, which under Governor [Mitt] Romney introduced a healthcare reform plan very similar to what the president has introduced here,” Carney said. “And in their first month of enrollment, only 123 people enrolled for premium paying plans in Massachusetts.”