The New York Times reports on why the health-insurance exchanges have been so buggy: one factor was that the biggest contractor wasn't given specifications right away and only started writing software code this spring. Another factor was not rolling out a piece of the portal instead of the whole shebang at once. A third factor was that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor." Sources told the NYT that CMS did not have the capacity to take on that role.
The result: "Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen."
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