How could the president / white house have trouble setting up a website for so long?
Because at the White House they have the same problem as everyone else... good help is hard to find.
do they have that problem with CIA/NSA and other tech oriented gov't agencies?
The government has very inefficient hiring practices. It can, and usually does, take months to hire a candidate they like. And the pay is not so competitive. They lose candidates all the time to the private sector. But there are some jobs you can only get in the government, and candidates for those jobs will wait the year or so it can take to get hired.
but really tho, i'm sure most of you are web gurus - doesn't that seem suspicious to have such trouble creating a website for health care? also, did electronic voting get voted on or just accepted?
It's not suspicious at all.
There are companies that are good at bidding for federal contracts, and there are companies that are good at running massive interactive websites. There hasn't been much of a need before for them to be the same. So a company that wasn't up to the task managed to run the gauntlet of Federal procurement, because the companies best suited to make the site didn't have any expertise (or, probably, interest) in bidding.
Hell. The VA just past the 10 year mark of their web site. SUCKS.
Both are what you get with going with the lowest bidder.
Then again as John Glenn is quoted as saying "as I was hurtling through outer space I couldn't help thinking that every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder".