Alarm bells are ringing over the status of Obamacare's privacy protection system, which is scheduled to start October 1 despite missed deadlines in getting it ready to operate. CNN has made no mention of the Inspector General report on the missed deadlines.
Reuters said the government was "months behind" in testing the system's security, where personal information would be stored to determine a person's eligibility for subsidies in purchasing health insurance at state exchanges. If the system was rolled out as scheduled before it was ready, "The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft," Reuters said.
Former HHS general counsel Michael Astrue voiced dire concern over the privacy system, saying "It's chaos...It's been chaos for several years."
CNN still has not mentioned the inspector general's report this week. The network did talk Obamacare multiple times – quoting Mitt Romney and other Republicans reprimanding conservatives who would risk a government shutdown to defund the law.
"Former presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is warning members of his own party, a government shutdown, he says, is not the answer," Early Start co-host John Berman said on Wednesday.
"Obamacare is the law of the land, passed the House and the Senate, signed by the President into law. The Supreme Court said it was totally constitutional as you remember and then the President was re-elected so it is the law of the land," The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer reminded Heritage Action's Dan Holler. "I suspect most of the Republicans will want to get along as opposed to wanting to see the government shutdown, but we'll see," he added.
