Obamacare Spanish Website Sees Delay As Latinos Become Enrollment Focus

President Barack Obama went into damage control mode this week when the Affordable Care Act's online insurance exchanges didn't work as well as planned when it went live on October 1, with many people finding themselves unable to sign onto the site or create accounts. But many of the estimated four million Americans who are eligible for the exchanges and speak Spanish as their primary language have even more reason to be frustrated: the Spanish-language site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, hasn't yet been fully launched, and no date for it has yet been given.

"We did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a website. That's not what this is about," the president said earlier this week in defense of the law. "We waged this battle to make sure that millions of Americans in the wealthiest nation on Earth finally have the same chance to get the same security of affordable, quality health care as everyone else." He told members of the public who might've encountered trouble in registering online to call 1-800-318-2596 to buy health care via telephone. "You can get your questions answered by real people 24 hours a day in 100 different languages," he said.

That same telephone number is what users find on the main page of the Spanish-language site, which also says that online service will be available "soon". For now, users can only use CuidadoDeSalud.gov to access some information about the exchanges. A button reading "Apply Now" in Spanish takes users to a site with the phone number and a list where, after selecting the state they live in, they're given state-specific information on where they'll have to enroll when the time comes.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 10 million Latinos are eligible to buy insurance on the exchanges, which opened on October 1. Matt Barreto, head of the polling firm Latino Decisions, told Marketplace.org that the delays on Spanish-language online services for the exchanges could send the wrong message to Hispanics. "For a Spanish-dominated Latino household to then go to the federal government website and not be able to find that information, just symbolically makes you wonder how important is our community here," he said.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican opponent of the healthcare law who is Cuban-American, said in a press release that would introduce legislation when the Senate reconvenes which would "delay the individual mandate until six months after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) certifies the website and all other sign-up options...are fully functional." Rubio said his bill would also exempt people from paying fines for not signing up if they could prove they were unable to because of technical or customer service issues. "Hispanics have among the highest uninsured rates in the nation. Yet despite hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to a Spanish-language propaganda campaign, the Spanish-language ObamaCare website hasn't even been launched," he said, adding, "It's not fair to punish anyone for not buying ObamaCare when the website they are supposed to buy it on doesn't work."

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