we're joined again by mary agnes carey of kaiser health news. and susan dentzer, a health analyst for the newshour. welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> woodruff: susan, what's the latest on what's happened today? we know people were madly signing up, at least some were, what are the final knurls? >> we don't know the actual final numbers for today, but we do know that the department of health and human services says that 1.6 million visitors -- visits were made to healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance web site, and that more than 800,000 calls were placed to call centers. and that, of course, leaves out what happened in the state ex plaining changes. we know -- the state exchanges. we know there are 14 state-based exchanges and the district of columbia, we don't know the numbers there, but it's quite conceivable that potentially another million people have signed up in the past few days. >> woodruff: for anybody who's watching who hasn't signed up, who wants to sign up, how much time do they have with the penalty if they don't? >> we

for an update on what's working and what's not, we turn to mary agnes carey of kaiser health news, an independent organization, and ceci connolly, managing director of health institute at pricewaterhousecoopers which works with insurers and others in the healthcare industry. mary agnes, what's the justification for the delay? >> they say it's basically akin to election day. if you're at the polling places at the time it closes and in line you get to complete the process. they want to allow people who are in the process to complete it. but you get to self attest. you get to tell government yes, i tried to enroll before march 31 but it didn't work so i need more time. >> reporter: why would they need to extend it? because they're not hitting the numbers and getting the people they want to involved? >> they say they've made improvements to the web site and working smoothly. web site traffic is up. the last-minute surge they expect, if they have any problems, they want to make sure they can complete the application. >> reporter: ceci, we have been watching the push the administration is g

joining us is mary agnes carey and julie rovner of national public radio.et me begin as we approach the deadline with the orderable care at. -- affordable care act. what will it look like? >> it will look like it looks like today on april 1. what we hope we see is a large number of individuals who are how the joining in march. we will not really know that until we have a sense of who coming in. it is a marathon. it has never been a sprint. we expected the healthier people would probably wait until the last bit of time to sign up. we have to see now what happens. we can get a better sense of that to the end of april. whiteyou give the house a grade, what would you give it? looking at the last several weeks particularly, there is a lot being done to make it clear what is out there, getting into social media. i think that is very good. we are doing extraordinarily amount of things to meet them where they live, social media, helpision, counselors that explain options to people. these are important decisions that people need to look at these options in terms of

joining us is mary agnes carey and julie rovner of national public radio. let me begin as we approach the deadline with the affordable care act. what will it look like? >> it will look like it looks like today on april 1. what we hope we see is a large number of individuals who are how the joining in march. we will not really know that until april until we have a sense of who coming in. it is a marathon. it has never been a sprint. we expected the healthier people would probably wait until the last bit of time to sign up. we have to see now what happens. we can get a better sense of that to the end of april. >> if you give the white house a grade to get young people to sign up, what would you give it? >> looking at the last several weeks particularly, there is a lot