Despite the promise of health insurance for millions of Americans under the Affordable Care Act starting on October 1, unfortunate bugs, stalls, errors, dropped accounts, eternal loading screens, and other glitches have plagued the official website.

          The $394 million website, which is meant to be a one-stop, easy consumer solution to buy health care, has largely backfired with these technical problems. The technological issues have also become heavy Republican cannon fodder for politicians like Ted Cruz, a notable tea party member. The website contractors, CGI Federal and Optum/QSSI, have suffered a Congressional grilling over the poor implementation and alarms raised upon this issue, to which they responded that enabling the website to work was the government’s problem, not the contractors’. Although the website has experienced multiple errors, a small number of citizens have been able to obtain health insurance and are ecstatic about the results. Obama has been forced to address the issue in a live press conference, recognizing the failures of the new website and promising relief by the end of November. He is also asking for citizens to purchase their plans via phone, mail, or in person, appointing Jeffrey Zients to oversee a committee devoted to fixing the current problems. Penalties incurred under the previous deadlines will now be revoked and all deadlines are currently revoked as well, as the problem seemingly does not have an end in sight. Analysts have claimed that even if the website resumes operation, the general public will still be skeptical about the whole affair; generally, consumers will shun a website with even one bad experience.

          Healthcare.gov has received a lot of flak from a variety of parties, both political and non-political. However, this marks a shift from  the Obama administration’s classic mode of obfuscated legislation and continued denial, though officials still have not revealed the full scope of the problem at hand. While throwing a slew of computer technicians at the problem, Obama promises to solve the problem and regain the trust of those who are exasperated at this serious setback. Long term repercussions, however, remain to be seen.