The Obama administration has been getting visibly frantic about their campaign to ‘inform’ the public about the ‘benefits’ of ObamaCare, i.e., convince Americans to sign up for the included insurance plans en masse — because they are well aware that unless they can get large numbers of people into the system early on, the whole thing doesn’t stand a chance. Without Americans’ hefty participation, most especially the young and healthy, the “affordable” part of the law’s title most definitely won’t be, since insurance companies won’t have enough low-cost participants to balance out the heightened and more expensive risk pools into which they are being co-opted.

Hence, the recent revelation about HHS Secretary Sebelius’s wildly sketchy push to solicit ‘voluntary’ funds from the very same companies and organizations over which ObamaCare now affords her executive department massive regulatory control, about which she was questioned today in a Congressional hearing today and testified that she has made on behalf of the non-profit Enroll America:

“Three were to discuss the organization and suggest the entities look at the organization,” Sebelius testified at a House hearing Tuesday. The other two phone calls, to officials at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block, were direct solicitations for fundraising. Sebelius said that she did not request a specific level of donation from those two companies.

Sebelius made the three outreach phone calls to Johnson & Johnson, Ascension Health, a Catholic hospital system, and health insurer Kaiser Permanente. She pushed back on multiple reports that officials at these companies, which the Health and Human Services department regulates, felt pressure to donate to Enroll America after the conversation.

“If they felt pressure, they misunderstood,” she said. “I can’t answer what they felt. I can tell you that … I have made fundraising solicitations to two groups and I did not discuss funding with the other three entities. I did discuss Enroll America.”

You “can’t answer what they felt”? …Fancy a guess, perhaps?

The Obama administration, of course, has every reason in the world to worry, according to at least one new poll. CNBC reports:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May. …

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts.

This could spell disaster for the Obama administration and the Democrats if they don’t fix it soon. They have no choice but to put on a brave face and fully embrace the law in the run-up to the 2014 midterms, but their desperation in getting the system operational in time is only getting more and more apparent.