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Millions of Americans who have lost their health plans, and millions of others who are going to lose their plans this year and next, are wondering if Obamacare can get any worse. A look at the Spanish version of the federal health website might answer that question.
According to this Associated Press report, those attempting to navigate the Spanish site “have discovered their own set of difficulties.” For one thing the site was launched two months late, on December 6, five days after the Univision network aired a documentary about a Mexican-American teenager whose father suffered three heart attacks with no insurance. The site adds special features to the usual incompetence. CuidadoDeSalud.gov actually means “beware of health” and Hispanics have good reason to remain wary, according to navigator Adrian Madriz.
“When you get into the details of the plans, it’s not all written in Spanish,” he told reporters. “It’s written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them.” The site translates “premium” as “prima” which means a female cousin. But the problems go beyond Spanglish, according to Grettl Diaz, originally from Cuba.
“In my opinion, the website doesn’t work,” she told reporters. Government health employees repeatedly told Diaz to call back because the website was down. She spent a week on the phone and still “couldn’t get it done.” So for Hispanics the site is illegible and dysfunctional. CuidadoDeSalud.gov is slower than the primary English site, so federal navigators prefer to steer Hispanics to that website.
Obamacare apologist Jane Delgado of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health said the delays were merely “part of the process” and that federal officials would get it running better soon. HHS mouthpieces claimed likewise but Hispanics nationwide are getting a different message according to Gabriel Sanchez, political science professor at the University of New Mexico.
“They will look at this, and think, ‘Man, they really don’t care about us.’” They would be right about that, and the problems of Obamacare to date make a strong case that federal health bosses don’t really care about anybody.