I don't know the specifics of the Washington healthcare exchange, but I can tell you right now, the healthcare.gov didn't fail because they chose contractors to

I don't know the specifics of the Washington healthcare exchange, but I can tell you right now, the healthcare.gov didn't fail because they chose contractors to do the job, they failed because of extremely incompetent management on the government side. Had a start up been chosen to do healthcare.gov, and none of the government management were changed, even the best start up would've failed too. The same contractors that did healthcare.gov (CGI Federal) also developed the Kentucky exchange, which has been lauded as one of the more successful state exchanges. If the contractor was the problem, you'd have expected them to fail in Kentucky too.