CBS NEWS: Healthcare.gov’s Emergency Triage Plan.

It all sounded pretty good the day healthcare.gov went online: President Obama said people were flocking to the site. And any “glitches,” as he called them, would be fixed and they’d have the site running more quickly in just a few hours.

On Friday — 24 days later — the man the president brought in to rescue his health insurance program acknowledged the painfully obvious: that the problems have been far worse than we were told. Jeffrey Zeints said they’ll take weeks — if not longer — to fix. Plus, he’s shaking up the team overseeing the repairs. . . .

Zients says there are two categories of issues with the web site: performance, which is speed, response time and reliability; and function, the bugs that prevent the software from working properly.

The government also announced it’s removing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as overseers of repairs. That job is going to QSSI, one of the tech companies that helped build healthcare.gov.

“And by the end of November, healthcare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users,” said Zients.

That end of November date could be make or break for affordable care, according to one former Obamacare official who didn’t want to be identified. He said the government has weeks — not months — to fix the Web site before the entire business model gets thrown off.

Indeed.