Two lawyers at the Congressional Research Service have mixed feelings about the legal basis for Obama administration efforts to overcome public exchange enrollment system problems.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might not necessarily give the administration authority to offer retroactive access to health insurance subsidy tax credits to exchange glitch victims, according to Edward Liu and Erika Lunder, the CRS lawyers.

But it also isn't clear who would have standing to challenge the administration's interpretation in court, because it's not clear whether anyone would be injured by the administration offering retroactive access to the tax credits, Liu and Lunder write.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.