Bloomberg News

More than 975,000 Americans signed up this month for health insurance under Obamacare, pushing total enrollment above 1.1 million in 36 states covered by the U.S. healthcare.gov website.

President Barack Obama said the thousands of people now signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act overshadow the hit he’s been taking in the polls for the defect-riddled roll-out of the Affordable Care Act.

The health care website’s improved performance has both U.S. political parties shifting strategies, with President Barack Obama’s team preparing a January advertising blitz and a wave of celebrity promotions to boost enrollment, allies said.

After struggling for two months to fix the federal online insurance exchange at the core of the law, Obama Tuesday began what aides say will be a three-week campaign to use his bully pulpit to regain momentum for his signature domestic initiative.

The move comes in response to Republican lawmakers’ criticism of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act over the healthcare.gov website troubles and the cancellation notices sent to hundreds of thousands of current policy holders as a result of the law.

President Barack Obama plans to highlight the 2010 health care law’s benefits at a White House event Tuesday that kicks off a three-week campaign to regain support for a program marred by a troubled implementation.

Expenditures in the $2.7 trillion U.S. health care system have doubled since 1980, growing to 18% of gross domestic product and leading to financial success for drugmakers, hospitals and insurers.

President Barack Obama pressed top U.S. insurers to help consumers cope with the rocky start of his health care law as the Republican-led House passed a bill that would let Americans keep their current policies through 2014.

If enrollment in the online marketplaces repeats the pattern set in the Massachusetts exchange that was the model for Obamacare, the young people vital to the plan’s financial stability are paying little attention to the federal website’s mishaps.

Statins will be recommended for almost 33 million Americans, about twice the number under previous guidelines. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer worldwide, accounting for 1 in 4 U.S. deaths.

As the president directs aides to look for solutions to the health plan cancellations, the White House’s chief technology officer will appear before Congress this week after being subpoenaed to do so.

Despite taking Healthcare.gov offline for hours a day to make technological fixes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Wednesday the site continued to experience multiple slowdowns and displayed error messages to numerous visitors throughout the day.

The race to construct an online insurance exchange by Oct. 1 spurred the Obama administration to use an expedited bidding system that limited its choice of a builder to just four companies, including CGI Group.

A day after her deputy apologized for the failures with the Affordable Care Act insurance exchange, U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius followed suit and told Congress that she shoulders the blame for the botched rollout.

Health insurers stand to gain millions of customers in an expansion of private insurance options and the Medicaid program under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. The industry, though, has raised alarms about faulty data they’ve received from the federal exchange since it opened on Oct. 1.

To repair its troubled health care website, the Obama administration may need to add project workers with fresh talent, take portions of the system off line for days or weeks, and conduct more comprehensive tests to prevent crashes and delays, technology experts say.

As intelligence emerges about failed and rushed testing in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 1 launch of Healthcare.gov, an expert close to state-run exchanges says these issues may not be as easily fixed as the president alluded to on Monday.

CEO Bob Kerzner is set to announce the initiative at LIMRA’s annual conference this week in New York. LIMRA estimates that the U.S. population 55 and older will have about $22 trillion in investible assets by 2020.

The “bugs” that have plagued the rollout of U.S. health insurance exchanges will be fixed by Dec. 15, said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, the lead author of the 2010 health care law.

Exactly how bad are things on the federal health care exchanges? Sunday’s New York Times brought a deeply reported piece from Robert Pear, Sharon LaFraniere and Ian Austen.