"As I understand it, the States that did their own websites are doing just fine."

Minnesota good...Oregon not even up and running..California good...Hawaii had problems....etc, etc

Exchanges just might lead to a single payer system. Then the red states were the ones refusing to set up exchanges I thought sort of by default single payer system will probably evolve which was not what the GOP said they were for when the ACA was in process of getting passed. Don't know where they are trying to go. Now there is talk of GOP members putting up a health care plan, what? I have wondered how they would try to take the credit away from Obama and his Democratic Congress.

It's efficiencies of scale, and would encourage more insurance providers to participate.

But there is no hiding the fact that the launch was a disaster, and I thought the President did an OK job of taking responsibility. We should learn from it and move on. I've been involved in many big projects, and from what I heard, this was clearly a case where there was no-one with the power and guts to say "we're not ready to go." It has parallels with the Challenger disaster.

And I remember the Challenger disaster quite well. There is no comparison.

but it is the face of the ACA. And it will eventually be a really good system.

I said there were *parallels* with the Challenger disaster. I too remember it like it was yesterday. And you probably know there were people who knew they should not launch that day. They were ignored, not for technical reasons, but for "public relations" reasons -- the launch could not be delayed any more.

But there are parallels. And to be more clear, a case where the working level people knew it wasn't ready, but people in power would not raise the alarm, because of pressure to not delay.

I've worked on a project where everyone knew there was absolutely no chance it would finish on time, but lower management did not have the guts to report the true state of things. And to be fair, the working level people did not stick their necks out either, to be the bearer of bad news.

I realize using the Challenger disaster as an example was not a good choice, but it immediately popped into my mind. I think about it a lot.

I hope we never forget the Challenger, or the civilian who died that day.

But otherwise you bring up some good points - like lower management who "did not have the guts to report the true state of things".

That brings up my 3rd point - it was a PRIVATE firm that created the website.

I have been involved in several roll-outs and there is one thing I have learned - no matter how much Alpha and Beta testing you do, the product won't be ready once you release it into the "real world". Be prepared to fix glitches you didn't know existed.

Which brings us to my 1st point - the website is NOT the ACA.

there will be much written about exactly what went wrong. It will be interesting to read.

I once worked for a company that would get burned in projects like this one, and so they started having audits, where an audit team would privately talk with random people on an in-progress project, and ask them questions like "what are your biggest problems" and "do you have confidence that project will finish on time" and report on what was really going on. I'm not sure how well it really worked, but it was an attempt to avoid these late surprises.

Chris Hayes on 10/19/13 about what the problems are and how long ago they started...

Chris Hayes: Obamacare was a target before it even existed: http://www.msnbc.com/all-in

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/obamacare-was-a-target-before-it-even-existed-54942275509