[njharman]

> Any market based solution website has to very agile and responsive

This is provably false by visiting any number of old, large company websites, esp in healthcare or banking. In addition the government isn't in this kind of business, it outsources almost everything to "free market" companies, who extract as much margin as they and their lobbyists can get away with.

Complexity has much more to do with size of and number of evolved entities than whether they are profit motivated or not.

[john_b]

Large companies in well established industries sometimes operate with near monopoly power and are only threatened when the entire industry undergoes a long term, permanent change. Most people don't consider such a situation a functioning, healthy market. Healthcare and banking are two great examples of industries whose dynamics tend to result in a small number of powerful entities calling the shots, the former due to legal reasons and the latter due to economies of scale.

[Spooky23]

Bad software development processes are everywhere. I've seen more than one successful companies that aren't massive corporations futz around and produce garbage. I've also seen highly effective government organizations produce some awesome product.

[hga]

While I wouldn't call it "awesome" (bit too clunky for that), the Medicare.gov site that CGI Federal is responsible for (don't know if they built it or the recent Plan D shopping and enrollment part) is pretty good, very solid and gets the job done.

[joe_the_user]

I should make have said something like "need to be ... to succeed". That many "market" sites aren't agile isn't the point, the point is that to be useful for the purpose of impelling lower prices for consumers, the Obamacare website needs to be agile. To the extent it isn't agile, it won't be helping it's cause.

[roin]

I'll second this one, I spent five years at a major consulting company working in large banks and insurance companies, and there was NOTHING agile about development.