As I see it the point was to make it less unaffordable. Certainly "less painful" would be desirable, but as long as people can get the coverage (open enrollment is several months long, so a few days of downtime is bad, but nonfatal from a service perspective) and care gets reimbursed (still unknown, but I don't think it uses this particular infrastructure) I think you have to view the system implementation as a success.

Again, BCBS et. al. have been inflicting terrible web experiences on their users for quite some time now.