Robert Gibbs: Health Care Rollout 'Excruciatingly Embarrassing'

Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs thinks the Affordable Care Act's stumbling online debut on Oct. 1 amid a government shutdown is "excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services."

On MSNBC's "Now with Alex Wagner" Monday, Gibbs said he thinks the technical glitches accompanying the rollout of health care exchanges were much bigger than server issues.

"This was bungled badly. This was not a server problem, just too many people came to the website, this is a website architecture problem,” he said.

Within hours of the launch of the high-profile exchanges, the websites designed as enrollment portals for the uninsured became riddled with technical malfunctions, including error messages and crashed pages.

According to Reuters, IT experts said that the glitches on the main website for the exchanges were more likely due to system design rather than high traffic volume alone.

Gibbs added that after the Affordable Care Act's online enrollment problems are resolved, he hopes "they fire some people that were in charge of making sure this thing was supposed to work."