It's not that the people who built the original healthcare.gov were stupid people Thats very kind of you but they probably were, if not stupid, then just large

It's not that the people who built the original healthcare.gov were stupid people Thats very kind of you but they probably were, if not stupid, then just large companies who routinely do these big government websites and mess them up and only just get them done years late and way over budget and don't really give a shit or face any consequences. This NPR article says the original site was built by a bunch of different companies, most of them subcontracting out to other companies, and no-one really in charge of the overall architecture apart from some little subsection of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who probably weren't ready for the cat herding required. https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/10/25/240532575/a-diagram-of-healthcare-gov-based-on-the-people-who-built-it https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/10/25/24... I can tell you that the difference between a site made the 'Silicon Valley' way and an 'enterprisey' site made by EDF or Acccenture or Fujitsu or one of those other big companies is a massive difference. Its a completely different world.