After two weeks of problems affecting the Health Insurance Marketplace rolled out as part of the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"), a report in the New York Times shows that government officials aren't quite sure how long it will take to fix the $400 million system.

"One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done," the Times reported yesterday. "'I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,' that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process."

As we've reported, Healthcare.gov has had trouble keeping up with traffic demands. With people unable to log into their accounts, government contractors mistakenly told health insurance seekers that their passwords had been reset.

Government IT projects (and even non-government IT projects) fail all the time, so the Healthcare.gov problems are perhaps no surprise. But this project's failures are more noticeable than most due to having an immediate impact on US residents, many of whom are attempting to purchase health insurance to comply with an individual mandate.

After interviewing "two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates," and examining confidential documents, the Times described some of the financial, technical, and managerial mistakes that caused Healthcare.gov to drive consumers crazy. The story notes:

Confidential progress reports from the Health and Human Services Department show that senior officials repeatedly expressed doubts that the computer systems for the federal exchange would be ready on time, blaming delayed regulations, a lack of resources and other factors. Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process. As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the Web site, HealthCare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans.

14.6 million people have visited the insurance exchange, but "just a trickle" have been able to enroll in insurance plans. "And some of those enrollments are marred by mistakes," the Times reported. "Insurance executives said the government had sent some enrollment files to the wrong insurer, confusing companies that have similar names but are in different states. Other files were unusable because crucial information was missing, they said."

A "round-the-clock" effort is underway to fix the website in time for the Dec. 15 deadline to register for insurance that begins Jan. 1, the date the individual mandate takes effect.