[6][7][8] The design of the website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and built by a number of federal contractors, most prominently CGI Group of Canada.

[15] On July 30, 2014, the Government Accountability Office released a non-partisan study that concluded the administration did not provide "effective planning or oversight practices" in developing the HealthCare.gov website.

Designed to assist the millions of uninsured Americans, the comparison shopping features involve a visual format somewhat analogous to websites such as Amazon.com and Etsy.

[19] President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law on March 23, 2010, in the East Room before a select audience of nearly 300 people.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the ACA would reduce the number of uninsured by 32 million, increasing coverage for the non-elderly citizens from 83 to 94 percent.

[21] The Sunlight Foundation has stated that at least forty-seven private company contractors have been involved with the ACA in some capacity as of fall 2013, with the measure causing a wide variety of policy changes.

Xenakis claims CGI Federal were likely to have hired many incompetent programmers due to Massachusetts transferring the development contract to another firm, Optum.

[11] The whole effort was officially coordinated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency that commentators such as journalists David Perera and Sean Gallagher have speculated was ill-suited to that task.

Unfortunately, regulations pertaining to large government contracts in many countries, including the United States, are not a good match for agile software development.

Although it appeared to be up and running normally, visitors quickly encountered numerous types of technical problems,[11][29] and, by some estimates, only 1% of interested people were able to enroll to the site in the first week of its operations.

[30] In Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Paul Ford summed up the issue by remarking, "Regardless of your opinions on the health-care law, this is the wrong way to make software."

[18] Todd Park, the U.S. chief technology officer, initially said on October 6 that the glitches[clarification needed] were caused by unexpected high volume when the site drew 250,000 simultaneous users instead of the 50,000-60,000 expected.

[32] Despite later comments, concerns about the readiness of the exchanges had been raised in March 2013, by Henry Chao, the deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who had said that "let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience".

[9] The New York Times[33] and The Washington Post[34] reported in November 2013 that the Obama administration brought in consulting firm McKinsey & Company to assess the website.

[citation needed] On October 21, 2013, President Barack Obama addressed the technical problems and other issues in a thirty-minute press conference at the White House Rose Garden, saying that there was "no excuse" for them.

[11] However, on October 23, the effective legal deadline for applying for health insurance via HealthCare.gov without getting a penalty via the individual mandate was extended to March 31, 2014, possibly because of the problems with HealthCare.gov and some of the state healthcare exchanges (but without a de jure explanation as such given).

The Obama administration appointed a contractor, Quality Software Services, Inc (QSSI), to coordinate the work of the fixing of the website problems.

This occurred the exact day after Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius had highlighted the design of that data hub as a government success.

[44][45][46] Partly in response to the Healthcare.gov outages, a number of privately operated services have launched to provide tools for consumers to calculate subsidy eligibility, as well as research, compare, and enroll for plans examples include HealthSherpa, Stride Health and HealthPocket.

[48][49] Critics pointed out that by focusing only on providing information, the HealthSherpa site did not resolve some of the most difficult problems, including allowing consumers to actually enroll in a plan.

[52] By the end of 2014, HealthCare.gov had apparently rewritten a large portion of the site and moved important functions "server-side," instead of being executed client-side in the user's web browser.

The software was DataTables, a free and open-source plugin for jQuery designed to improve presentation of data, and was dual-licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 and a modified 3-clause BSD license.

[60] The technical problems were heavily criticized, and Republican representatives sent President Obama a list of questions, demanding explanations for what went wrong.

[31] Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs described the technical problems as "excruciatingly embarrassing", and he said that some people should be fired.

"[62] Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican Representative from Ohio, told reporters that throughout November "more Americans are going to lose their health care than are going to sign up.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear counter-argued that while the website didn't work well yet that it soon would since HealthCare.gov represents "the future of health care", and he commented as well, "You know, the advice I would give the news media and the critics up here is take a deep breath.

[65] U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic Representative from California, commented about the controversy that she feels optimistic about things being fixed, saying "I have faith in technology" as well as "while there are glitches, there are solutions, as well."

[61] Professor and author Victor Lombardi commented to Bloomberg Businessweek that the website's issues "don't sound catastrophic", and he added that history "may judge this project as the catalyst that revolutionized the United States health-care system" such that "no one will remember a few hiccups at launch.

"[2] Although the law that decreed the creation of HealthCare.gov has been divisive and political speculation has taken place, polling done by the Gallup organization around the time of the difficult roll-out still have found that a majority of Americans support keeping at least some aspects of Obamacare.

[68] The bill would "require weekly updates on the number of unique website visitors, new accounts, and new enrollments in a qualified health plan, as well as the level of coverage," separating the data by state.