First, I want everyone to understand that what I'm about to say does NOT indicate my thoughts on the ACA one way or the other. I am speaking about this strictly from the perspective of problematic IT project launches as a person that as of recently works in a data center and has recently studied these problems in project management and IT strategy courses during my college career (which I recognize is not always as valuable as real-world experience, but I do have at least a base understanding of the topic).
The sad fact is that this (over-budget, over-schedule, and under-delivered projects) is a common problem with any large IT project in any type of organization or industry. And it's amazing how much knowledge there is on how to prevent these types of problems (can't recall the number of case studies I've done...also PMBOK), yet the problem persists regularly. Given how common the problem is, I'm not sure I would call it "disgusting." While it certainly isn't good, if anything, these issues would best be described as "expected." And, yes, it's sad when such affairs are simply expected. But, on the other hand, given the commonality of this problem across any group, it's hard to point fingers at the government without pointing fingers at every other organization and industry for even allow these practices to continue as regularly as they do.
I find it very frustrating that both Democrats and Republicans are crying out against these problems as though they were entirely unexpected and act as an indicator for the ACA's supposed impeding failure. Yes, it's not good, and, yes, it should be fixed as soon as possible (though there is a good bit of time still before it actually hits the panic stage). Yes, it would have been better to roll out without issues in the first place.
Though, realistically, rolling out services like this on such a large scale RARELY goes off without a hitch. Anyone on these forums should be aware of this fact. I know these aren't perfect comparisons, but there are enough parallels and similarities and the comparison holds merit. Think of most MMO launches, the GTA Online launch, etc. (There are too many similar, problematic IT-service-based launches for me to know that could go on the list as well, many that aren't related to gaming. Can you think of some?) These had months and years of development time put into them and millions of dollars as well. What happened at the launch? Glitches, slowdowns, disconnects, being unable to connect at all, outages, data loss, and following patches/fixes. You'd also read reports of "greater interest than expected." I'd like for services to roll out trouble free as much as the next guy, but what in the hell was anyone expecting with the ACA? You can't foresee every launch issue, and I guarantee you many would not have been comfortable buying more hardware than what would be the bare minimum to meet the estimated level of interest. So, you can't argue from the perspective of, "Buy more to be safer, because more interest than expected seems like it should be expected if this is such a common issue," because that's just potentially throwing away money. It might also make more sense to buy for average expected interest/demand vs. the higher-than-average surge of interest at launch (basically a problem that will smooth itself out over time) from a monetary perspective. It seems like people tend to forget about launch issues after time anyway (the country has the collective memory of a goldfish).
These issues are not issues that can be fixed quickly, especially with a system of this size and complexity. When you consider the amount of time required to identify the root cause(s) of the issue, troubleshoot it, find solutions, test solutions, and implement solutions (which often does not go off without problems), it starts to become clear. Then when you factor in the need to purchase, build, test, and install new hardware in combination with what I just mentioned, it should be painfully obvious to anyone that has worked on that side of IT that this should not be expected to be fixed immediately.
Too many people in the country talking about an issue when they don't even know what's inside their computer box thing. I find that horribly frustrating. Anyway, rant over.