In broad strokes, the disastrous launch has vindicated the law’s critics. Although few predicted all the specific problems the law would have, the rollout was, if anything, worse than most dared to imagine. Almost nothing has gone well for the health law in 2013, which was supposed to be the year that its biggest benefits were introduced to the public. The first nine months of the year were marked by a series of delays: key provisions of the small business exchange, income verification requirements, and the employer mandate were all postponed. Democratic legislators voiced their growing anxieties about the exchange implementation process behind closed doors at the White House, and occasionally in public as well.

The administration dismissed such concerns, but in the last three months of the year, the skeptics were proved right. In October, the online health insurance exchanges that were supposed to be central to the law’s expanded coverage scheme didn’t go live so much as show up dead on arrival: The federal exchange covering 36 states barely worked at all, and more than a third of the 15 states running their own exchanges had significant problems.

There was no question about it: The administration had failed—and they had failed despite scaling back the project’s scope via multiple delays, and despite leaving some 30 to 40 percent of the project incomplete.