The New York Times is reporting that the Healthcare.gov website contains "about 500 million lines of software code." This number, attributed to "one specialist", and widely repeated across the interwebs, seems incredibly far-fetched (even assuming a large fraction of that number includes standard libraries). If this is an accurate estimate, it would truly be staggering (as this fascinating infographic vividly reveals). I realize StackExchange:Programmers isn't Snopes.com, but I'd like to find out if anyone here believes this is even remotely possible. I'd like to know if there is a plausible system of accounting (using examples from publicly available data, if possible) that could lead someone to conclude that such an estimate is within the realm of reason. How could a codebase (by any measure) sum up to such an exhorbitant number of code lines?