"We just got great news today," President Obama said in a video posted on the White House's Facebook page.
"In the final day (at the original enrollment deadline Sunday) we had more consumers sign up than we have ever had," said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
On Monday, federal officials extended the deadline a week, until next Sunday, for those who couldn't enroll in Affordable Care Act insurance plans on the federal Healthcare.gov site over the weekend because of computer glitches or long waits.
"We are pleased that the vast majority of consumers were able to apply and pick a plan through HealthCare.gov or its call center without a problem," said Aaron Albright, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
But Albright said the extra time was granted for consumers who couldn't finish enrolling because of long wait times at the federal call center leading up to the Sunday night deadline or because of a technical issue, such as being unable to submit an application because their income could not be verified.
Those people will still be able to get coverage that begins March 1.
The extension was prompted by the Saturday outage of an Internal Revenue Service function for Obamacare enrollment, which could have prevented about 500,000 people from enrolling. The glitch prevented some people from getting their income verified so they could enroll on HealthCare.gov and at least some state exchanges by the Sunday deadline.
While Connecticut's exchange was unaffected, those for Massachusetts and Washington state were hampered by the outage.
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