The governments revamped health care website was put to its biggest test yet as a record-breaking surge of Americans rushed to beat Tuesdays extended deadline for signing up for coverage.

HealthCare.gov, the website where people in 36 states can shop for insurance, received nearly 2 million visits Monday and handled the traffic well, the government said.

Monday was the sign-up deadline for people wanting coverage at the start of the new year. But the Obama administration pushed back the deadline a day to deal with expected heavy traffic from procrastinators.

Critics of the law seized on the extension as more evidence that the program is in trouble.

The amazing, ever-expanding deadline? Its clearly a sign of desperation by the administration to do everything they can to increase the number of people signing up, said health economist Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare for President George H.W. Bush.

The laws supporters said the extra day means the public got the message and wants subsidized health insurance.

A lot of people who previously found health care unaffordable are learning they can get very substantial subsidies that bring premiums within their reach, said Ron Pollack, president of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group leading efforts to get uninsured people signed up for coverage next year. Thats why were seeing a large influx of people trying to get enrolled.

The website went through extensive hardware and software upgrades to make it more reliable and increase its capacity.

When the number of simultaneous users reached 60,000 on Monday, site operators employed a queuing system that allows people to either wait or give an email address to be invited back later, the government said. More than 60,000 users gave their email.

Many states operate their own online marketplaces for buying coverage, and some of them also extended their deadlines.

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Federal health care website put to test on deadline day