I guess it depends on the tradeoffs of reputational damage and making money. I gather the government told them "build a system that can handle 50,000 to 60,000 simultaneous users", which was "based partly on the all-time high of 30,000 simultaneous users for Medicare.gov" presumebly during the Plan D enrollment season (although per the article the theoretical max of healthcare.gov has not been disclosed: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/05/health-...).
Whatever the company thinks of the official goal, there's strict limits to how much extra they can spend to handle a much larger goal, vs. their getting paid on an emergency basis to bulk up the site....
Whatever the company thinks of the official goal, there's strict limits to how much extra they can spend to handle a much larger goal, vs. their getting paid on an emergency basis to bulk up the site....