Democrats aren’t running through the halls of Congress with their hair on fire yet, but anxiety over the possible blowback from the federal health care law is growing by the day. 
 
 Between the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov and the fact that millions of Americans are poised to lose their current health insurance coverage at the end of the year despite a promise from President Barack Obama that they would be able to keep their plans “no matter what,” congressional Democrats are scrambling to cover their hides before next year’s midterm elections. 
 
 A handful of Senate Democrats have leapt to support a proposal from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who's facing a tough re-election campaign in 2014, that would allow Americans with already existing insurance plans to keep them even if they don’t meet the quality guidelines established by the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 
 
 House Democrats on Wednesday held a closed-door meeting with White House officials, where some members vented frustration with the administration over the law's handling and demanded a solution by the end of the week. 
 
 
 
 Republicans, not surprisingly, are working to leverage the Obamacare problems for political gain. 
 
 In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Landrieu suggested that she had been misled when she voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010. 
 
 "When we passed the Affordable Care Act, we did so with the intention that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it," she said. "A promise was made, and this legislation will ensure that this promise is kept." 
 
 It's hard to see how that would be the case, given that millions of Americans at the time who were insured on private plans held policies that did not meet the minimum requirements set by the law. (Many Republicans at the time warned that this would be a consequence.) 
 
 So far, Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Dianne Feinstein of California have co-sponsored Landrieu's proposal. Hagan, Merkley and Pryor are up for re-election next year while Feinstein and Manchin are not. 
 
 
 
 On Wednesday, another lawmaker facing re-election in 2014, Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, introduced his own legislation that would allow Americans facing cancellations to keep their current plan for up to two years. 
 
 Landrieu and Udall's cause received a kick-start earlier this week when former President Bill Clinton, who has long advocated in favor of the health care law, said he thought the law should be changed to let people keep their current plans. 
 
 View gallery ." FILE - In this Dec. 5, 2012 file photo, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is seen on Capitol Hill in Washin … 
 
 “I personally believe — even if it takes a change in the law — the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” Clinton said in an interview with the website Ozy.com. 
 
 These new Democratic efforts to “fix” Obamacare, however, could actually prove disastrous for the law. 
 
 The Department of Health and Human Services has already struggled to persuade people to sign up for insurance plans through the federal exchanges. Despite Obama’s oft-repeated promise, allowing people to keep their existing plans could suck millions of potential customers out of the exchanges — customers the law relies on to remain sustainable. 
 
 Neither the White House nor Senate Democatic Leader Harry Reid have taken a position on the Democratic senators' proposals. 
 
 On Wednesday, Reid said he planned to hold a rare Thursday meeting with all Senate Democrats and White House officials to consider the new proposals. Reid declined to comment on anything related to health care during his weekly press conference, saying he would have more details after Thursday’s meeting. 
 
 At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said the president is looking into “options.” 
 
 “The president has instructed his team to come up with options for him to review,” Carney told reporters on Wednesday. “And you can expect a decision from him and announcement from him sooner rather than later on options that we can take to address the problem that we've been discussing here with regards to those individuals who have had their individual insurance plans cancelled because of the transition to the Affordable Care Act marketplaces." 
 
 Senate Republicans appeared positively gleeful about the Demorats’ efforts to change the law. 
 
 Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested he would not support Landrieu’s bill if it came for a vote. 
 
 “We think the thing ought to be repealed and replaced entirely. We think it can’t possibly work,” McConnell said. “And I’m somewhat suspicious about red state Democrats who are up in ’14 trying to promote some way out of their political dilemma. If they really want to fix Obamacare, they will join with us, repeal it and start over step by step to deal with the problem, which was the number of people uninsured.” 
 
 In the House, Republican Rep. Fred Upton, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has unveiled his own proposal to allow people to stay on their current plans. House Republican leaders have scheduled a vote on the bill for Friday, and it is expected to pass with at least some Democratic support. 
 
 Meanwhile, House Republican committee chairmen continue to hammer away at federal officials and private contractors responsible for the law's implementation. 
 
 The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday, for instance, hauled in IT specialists working to fix the website for a hearing about their progress. 
 
 Under questioning, the panel reported that the federal government had already spent “north of $600 million” on the project as of late September and even more during the repair process. 
 
 "The site is getting better week by week,” said Todd Park, the White House’s chief technology officer for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Some days are better than others." ||||| Story highlights Sebelius to testify that initial consumer experience is frustrating, unacceptable 
 
 Data hub behind website experiencing an outage, officials say late Tuesday 
 
 Committee hearing includes fierce partisan exchanges 
 
 A top Democrat says his party was imprecise in selling health care law 
 
 For the first time, someone in the Obama administration apologized for the problem-plagued Obamacare website. 
 
 Marilyn Tavenner also said on Tuesday that the online troubles were being resolved and the overall program was working, albeit slower and less successfully than hoped. 
 
 In the first congressional testimony from a government official on the botched launch of HealthCare.gov, the head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the House Ways and Means Committee that the "vast majority" of consumers would be able to successfully use the site by the end of November. 
 
 "I want to apologize to you that the website does not work as well as it should," she said, adding that HealthCare.gov "can and will be fixed." 
 
 The hearing served as a hot seat for Tavenner, whose agency has been blamed for the website troubles causing a political headache for President Barack Obama and his signature health care reforms, as well as a venting session for Republicans after their failed efforts to scuttle the reforms. 
 
 Tavenner reports to Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who has come under fire for the problems that plagued the introduction of the enrollment website. 
 
 Some congressional Republicans demand her resignation or firing, and Sebelius will face a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday. 
 
 She is expected to tell that committee the initial experience of HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many, and unacceptable. 
 
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 But she will also defend Obamacare, according to prepared remarks. 
 
 "The fact is that the Affordable Care Act delivered on its product: quality, affordable health insurance. The tremendous interest shown in HealthCare.gov shows that people want to buy this product. We know the initial consumer experience at HealthCare.gov has not been adequate. We will address these initial and any ongoing problems, and build a website that fully delivers on this promise of the Affordable Care Act," Sebelius is expected to say. 
 
 The health secretary will provide figures for the site, which has had more than 20 million unique visits to date. Over the past few weeks, nearly 700,000 applications have been submitted. People are also signing up through a call center, paper applications and in-person assistance. 
 
 "By enlisting additional technical help, aggressively monitoring errors, testing to prevent new issues from cropping up, and regularly deploying fixes to the site, we are working to ensure consumers' interaction with HealthCare.gov is a positive one, and that the Affordable Care Act fully delivers on its promise," Sebelius will say. 
 
 In an exclusive interview last week, the health secretary told CNN that Obama didn't know of the problems with the Affordable Care Act's website until after its troubled launch on October 1. This was despite the fact that insurance companies had been complaining and the site crashed during a prelaunch test run. 
 
 Policies canceled 
 
 More trouble for Obama came out of the testimony, as Tavenner conceded that some people with individual health coverage -- rather than the group coverage that most Americans have -- will be forced to get new policies because of increased requirements under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. 
 
 "These individuals in a small group, our individual markets, had no protections" before the reforms became law, Tavenner explained. 
 
 Until now, such consumers "could be kicked out any time for pre-existing conditions" or realize too late that their policies failed to cover hospitalization or cancer treatments, Tavenner said. The reforms protect them by requiring a minimum standard of coverage, she added. 
 
 For some, that means more expensive policies and any change breaks the oft-repeated pledge by Obama that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" when he was pushing for Congress to pass his signature reforms. 
 
 Republican Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois hammered Tavenner on that point, noting a constituent who got a letter telling her that the health care reforms caused the cancellation of her current plan with a more expensive alternative in its place. 
 
 "She has health insurance that she likes. She's been paying her premium. She wants to keep it. But she can't," Schock said. "Isn't that a lie?" 
 
 Tavenner responded that some insurers changed or discontinued plans that failed to meet the Obamacare requirements, even though present coverage could still be offered in some cases under a "grandfather" provision in the legislation, despite lacking the full benefits of the reforms. 
 
 She advised anyone being forced to get a new policy to examine all options under the new system, including the possibility of getting federal subsidies if they are eligible. 
 
 According to the Kaiser Family Foundation website, 15.4 million people had individual health care coverage in 2011, representing about 5% of the population. The vast majority of Americans -- at least two-thirds of the population in 2011 -- had coverage through their employer, Medicare, Medicaid or other public providers and will not be affected by changes involving individual coverage. 
 
 At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said "a significant portion" of the 5% of people with individual coverage will end up paying less for better policies when they shop around in the new exchanges. 
 
 "One of the issues that the Affordable Care Act was designed to address was the need to provide greater security to those Americans forced to seek insurance on the individual market," Carney said. 
 
 On Capitol Hill, a top House Democrat told reporters on Tuesday that his party "should have been more precise" when making the pledge about people keeping coverage they liked. 
 
 "I think preciseness would have been better," said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland. 
 
 He added that the promise was made to try to allay the fears of the majority of Americans who get health coverage from their employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. 
 
 Partisan exchanges 
 
 As expected, Tuesday's hearing included fiery partisan exchanges, with Republicans saying the website problems foreshadow deeper problems that threaten higher premiums and government intrusion in future health coverage while Democrats accused them of trying to kill reforms that benefit millions of Americans. 
 
 Under GOP questioning, Tavenner said initial figures on how many people have enrolled so far for health coverage under the reforms won't be available until mid-November. 
 
 She noted that the administration has expected the initial enrollment to be small, but noted that the enrollment period ends on March 31. 
 
 When asked by Republicans about the expected initial low enrollment, Tavenner pointed out that a similar dynamic occurred with implementation of the Massachusetts health care law, when people waited until the final deadline approached to sign up. 
 
 To GOP Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the committee chairman, low enrollment signals the failure of the health care reforms, which need young people, and people who are less expensive to insure, to sign up so insurers can offer affordable plans in markets that include older and people who are more expensive to cover. 
 
 "I fear we can see a fundamental breakdown of the insurance market where premiums will skyrocket, pricing millions of Americans out of health care," he said. 
 
 Later, Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas asked Tavenner for a guarantee that consumers will be able to obtain coverage required by the health care law before the deadline. 
 
 "What I can guarantee is that we have a system that is working. We are going to improve the speed of that system," she said. 
 
 But Brady interrupted her. 
 
 "Excuse me," he said. "You are saying the system right now is working?" 
 
 Tavenner didn't budge, responding: "I am saying it is working. It is just not working at the speed that we want and at the success rate that we want." 
 
 Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey lambasted Republicans on the panel for choosing to pile on the website woes in their continuing attempt to dismantle Obamacare instead of working with Democrats to improve settled law. 
 
 Citing the political battle last decade over the Bush administration's Medicare prescription drug benefit opposed by Democrats, Pascrell noted "we lost the policy fight" then but chose to help make the program work instead of trying to discredit or undermine it. 
 
 Standing up and pointing at his GOP colleagues, Pascrell shouted: "How many of you stood up to do that? None. Zero. Zero." 
 
 Website problems 
 
 Late Tuesday, officials said the data hub behind the Obamacare website was experiencing an outage, prohibiting customers from submitting new applications. 
 
 Verizon, which provides some technology services behind HealthCare.gov, said federal officials asked the company to provide additional computing and storage ability. 
 
 "At the request of HHS's deputy CIO, we are now undertaking infrastructure maintenance, which should be complete overnight," Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said. "We anticipate the strengthened infrastructure will help eliminate application downtimes." 
 
 A key tech malfunction brought down the site Sunday. 
 
 In prepared testimony for the hearing, Tavenner said private contractors hired to create the website "have not met expectations." Asked about that statement, she cited one of the contractors -- CGI Federal, which has a contract worth as much as $200 million for its work on the system.
– The problems with the Affordable Care Act have at least accomplished this much for candidates on the left: They now should know what job No. 1 is going forward, writes Alex Pareene at Salon. "The immediate priority—and progressives running for office in 2014 and 2016 should practice saying this out loud—is fixing Obamacare." He's talking about more than tech trouble, however. They need to address what he sees as other fundamental flaws with the ACA, including "coverage gaps, the ways insurance companies will continue to exploit people and rip them off, and the potential for the cost burden on middle-class people to grow." It's important that liberals acknowledge the problems and propose tangible solutions—like, say, federalizing Medicaid for those who live in states that haven't embraced ObamaCare—rather than simply getting defensive about it, he writes. Along those lines, conservative Rich Lowry writes in Politico that he's already tired of the "whining" he's hearing from Democrats about the new law and why things aren't working. "They insisted on this particular law, at this particular time. They own it. They own every canceled policy, every rate increase, every unintended consequence and every unpopular intended consequence. It is theirs, lock, stock and two smoking barrels." Click for Lowry's full column. Or click for Pareene's full column.