[hga]

Well, the government contracts didn't have that level of control, political and bureaucratic types from the White House on down to HHS's CMS were running the show, delivering requirements very late in the game and making constant changes to them, including the "no window shopping" registration first in August, and from many reports change orders through the week before launch.

So you ought to say "The government should of just built healthcare.gov..." ... except that's very clearly not the style of this government.

E.g. one simple way to take traffic off most of the system would be to provide an interface to the subsidy calculation to entities beyond the state exchanges (who have to use it; when Verzion accidentally took the site offline, they couldn't do much), like insurers. It's said to be on the todo list, but at a very low priority.