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Klein: Obamacare Glitches Could Constitute a 'Betrayal of Faith'

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein said he fears some of the "back end" problems on the healthcare.gov website could potentially compromise insurance policies for consumers Friday on MSNBC.

Klein expressed apprehension that website architecture issues could impact the type of policies people believe they are signing up for versus the coverage they actually have.

If that were to occur, Klein said, it would be a "betrayal of faith" on the part of the Obama administration:

EZRA KLEIN: […] So the website is communicating with different parts of the federal government, the IRS, the social security administration. It's getting all this data about you so it can say what is your subsidy, how much will you ultimately be paying for healthcare insurance. It isn't clear if all of that data is coming through correctly. Also more worryingly, if anything, that the data then to the insurer, you go and buy a plan from Aetna or Cigna or Blue Cross or whoever, that website needs to communicate that you bought this plan and what you bought correctly with the insurer. We're hearing widespread reports of that data coming in wrong, garbled, glitchy, people being disenrolled accidentally. If that keeps happening, that is actually the most dangerous of all the glitches. Because it's one thing if you can't get in, it's a little but of a no harm no foul except that you lost some time and are annoyed. But if you sign up for something and then you actually don't have it when you get sick or you don't have the right thing when you get sick, that is a huge betrayal of faith.

MSNBC has been notably vocal in covering Obamacare glitches today. Earlier, Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post asked why the contractors in charge of implementing the Obamacare website are still on the job:

On Morning Joe, the panel interviewed USA Today reporter Kelly Kennedy about her article in which experts suggested the healthcare.gov website may need to be entirely overhauled: