It was unquestionably the latter. It's been reported that they knew in 2010 that millions would be dropped from their plans. His political and policy advisers clashed on how to handle this. The political wing won and the lie was trotted out and repeated dozens of times.
I find it hard to believe that even Democrats could be as incompetent as this roll-out of Obama Care proves them to be. House and Senate Republicans read their plan and repeatedly told the Obama Administration for the last three years it wouldn’t work, and I find it hard to believe none of them bothered to read it and understand it for themselves, so what’s their game?
They’re genuinely surprised, but at what are they surprised? They couldn’t possibly be surprised that the obviously unworkable mechanics of Obama Care and a shoddily thrown together website aren’t working, so what’s going on here?
Could it be that Obama Care was never intended to get this far and was a “Red Herring” all along? As Obama Care was such an obviously unworkable plan, the Democrats knew the Republicans would find a way to prevent it from ever coming to fruition, and the Democrats would be left with the “issue.” Obama could then blame the Republicans for preventing “affordable” medical care for every American citizen and use it to rally his base at election time.
However, as it turned out, they either overestimated the Republican Party, or the Republicans saw this disaster coming and just stepped aside and let the Democrat Party shoot themselves in the foot.