[snowwrestler]

The initial version of healthcare.gov, before the exchanges launched, was a small informative site that was built by Development Seed, a small DC-based web shop. It was built in what would today be called “static page generation” style and therefore was able to be hosted on small hardware. At the time it was considered pretty advanced tactics.

I think this may be what you are thinking of. To my knowledge that site was entirely replaced when the federal exchange launched, and there was not a serious challenge serving the landing page since it did not take in or process any personal data. It was only once you started trying to find a plan that everything ground to a halt.

Development Seed also developed another project you may have heard of: Mapbox. (To which they eventually pivoted the entire company.)