Not even vaguely a scam, as I reply to you elsewhere in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6586603

Unless you want to posit that the contracts were accepted by companies that knew it could not be delivered in the time required. And even then, people are optimistic, and I strongly suspect they didn't think HHS/CMMS would be so insane about the number of changes demanded during the process, going all the way through the week before launch (!!!).