How the tech-savvy Obama administration launched a busted healthcare website

[Commentary] The more we learn about the development of HealthCare.gov, the worse the situation looks.

The site has been serving myriad errors since it launched, including preventing users from creating accounts, failing to recognize users who do have accounts, putting users in inescapable loops, and miscalculating healthcare subsidies. While the Administration is claiming a 50 percent reduction in wait times after adding new servers, other serious issues persist. It’s obvious that the site launched before it was ready. How could the Obama Administration, the brains behind the most sophisticated online political campaign ever, be responsible for something so bone-headed? To start, HealthCare.gov wasn’t built by the elite team that built Obama’s campaign tech. The main $93.7 million contract to build the exchange was awarded to CGI Federal Inc., a subsidiary of the behemoth Canadian firm CGI Group. As is common with large contracts, CGI subcontracted with other megafirms for different aspects of the site. For instance, the "federal data services hub" was built by Quality Software Services. Until the December 15th deadline to buy mandatory health insurance (or face a penalty), HealthCare.gov is in what amounts to a very public beta test. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the healthcare exchange at HealthCare.gov, is not releasing the number of people who have successfully enrolled. The number is likely in the "low thousands," reports The Wall Street Journal.