Martin O'Malley's Healthcare Exchange Launch a Dud

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has been touting his Maryland Health Exchange over the last few months almost as much as he's touted his Rain Tax.  He was ahead of the curve at providing health insurance to people who do not have access to health insurance, people such as illegal immigrants.  Yesterday, the Maryland Health Exchange was officially launched.....with a big thud.

Yesterday when I went to the website to see what all of the fuss was about, I got this message:

We are currently experiencing a high volume of traffic on MarylandHealthConnection.gov and we want to make the experience as positive for everyone as possible.  Please check back later.

Is it just me, or are they saying "go away!!!"?  The first day of the exchange and you can't even use it.  This is a major failure and embarrassment for the O'Malley administration.  You had one thing to do today and you failed to do it correctly.

I then decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and check back again today.  But guess what?  Another message:

From time to time, the online marketplace may be temporarily unavailable as we conduct additional maintenance and test improvements in performance.

So Day 2 and the website is still not working properly.  Sounds like an untrained IT crew designed, developed, and deployed this website.  Anyone who works in in the IT world knows that you do load tests to ensure that heavy volumes would be handled properly.  But I guess if you contract it out to the lowest bidder, you get what the tax payers pay for.

Go to the website and check-out the thud for yourself.  Click on Start and watch the website stop.