HHS--Can They Make Their Deadline?

The dirty secret of government is that many legislated deadlines are not met.  Congress tends usually to ignore implementation once the bill is passed, so agencies really face few repercussions if they fail to meet the date.  This Politico article on HHS suggests the circumstances under which failure may not be an option: you're working on a highly visible,very controversial keystone of the program for a political party.  (If memory serves, Mark McClellan did a good job implementing the addition of Medicare Part D (drug coverage) back in the Bush days.)  We'll see how HHS does this time around.