a couple comments about the "horrible", "ill-fated", "embrassing" rollout of the federal aca market

1) problems related to huge number of users trying to get (or at least investigate) their health insurance options were made worse by the large number of republican governors who refused to cooperate at the state level, thereby pushing their own constituents to the federal website.

yet again, we see republicans pinning the blame on democrats while ignoring their own hand in creating that problem.

2) the rollout shows one of the many things that is different (sometimes better, sometimes worse, but mostly just different) about government compared to the private sector.

a private enterprise would most likely have looked at the state of the website and said no way are we rolling this embarrassment out looking like that. they would have delayed it until they had it looking pretty darn slick. the private sector hardly cares about bug-free, but they certainly want it looking slick and for customers to generate positive buzz about the website.

the government went ahead with the rollout because that was the mandated rollout date.

so perhaps it wasn't pretty, but a lot of people started getting their coverage on october 1. the private sector would have had a much glitzier, more "successful" rollout, but they would have waited 3 months while the private sector put more "ooh" and "ahh" into the website.