"
Well, they aren't getting instant gratification now, are they?"
Indeed!
But I was referring to the initial architecture of the site. E.g. the March objective, “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” expressed by Henry Chao, CMS CIO, who in theory should have been in the front lines. Sigh, I bet he was, knew what was coming but didn't have the authority to make it work, or as you implicitly suggest, down-grade the architecture/expectations into something that might possibly work in the time left.
And then there's the last minute (well, month) change to requiring a heavy duty, validated up the wazoo registration before doing anything. Doubt they could have made that work in less than 2 months ... maybe. This was needed, but at lower transaction rates, e.g. otherwise window shopping would allow a lot of people to see they couldn't get a better deal through the exchange (e.g. no subsidies for you, which only the federal system is allowed to calculate).
Suppose prior to that they arranged for "X rate of idempotent reads" with e.g. the IRS, and now they need a 10/100/1000X rate, meaning they should have cached everything that doesn't change quickly. Almost certainly too late to do it by then.
My, my, years from now this is going to be one of the most significant case studies in project development.