What's going on with the exchanges?

Either they're great or they're a train wreck -- that's what you hear about the Obamacare exchanges. I'm not an expert, but my guess is that they can't handle the traffic load. Meanwhile, Megan McArdle asked an expert and there could be a number of things going on:

The various glitches, he pointed out, “could very easily be because deadline pressure caused them to take some shortcuts that impacted their ability to scale.”

Such as?

“The aforementioned let's-hit-the-database-for-security-questions thing.”

Why would they use such a seemingly obvious poor design?

“It can be easier to make a call to another server to get something when you need it than to implement a cache that you prepopulate either from static files or from the database on startup. Making a call to another server is also something you'd naturally think to do if you hadn't had to focus on scalability before. The security question page is probably not the thing you're most concerned about, so you give it to the new hire to do as their starter project. They don't know what they're doing, so they implement it the straightforward way … and since you're under unbelievable deadline pressure to get something working now nobody reviews it in detail.”

Emphasis mine. Let's remember that Obamacare was signed into law on March 30, 2010. That would be 3 and a half years ago. You have to wonder about what's been going on if they have to take shortcuts because of deadline pressure. You would also think that by asking for a delay in implementation, the Republicans would actually be doing the Democrats a favor. You would be wrong, of course.