Obamacare Spanish Enrollment Site Finally Works, But Now Will Enough People Use It?

Name: Obamacare Rollout Erodes Confidence Among Latinos
Uploaded: 2013-12-10T14:30:59-05:00
Duration: 2 min 17 s
Description: The Spanish language equivalent of the famously flawed healthcare.gov, cuidadodesalud.gov, is running smoothly in its first week online and does not appear to be suffering the same growing pains as it's partner site.

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Obamacare Rollout Erodes Confidence Among Latinos

The Spanish language equivalent of the famously flawed healthcare.gov, cuidadodesalud.gov, is running smoothly in its first week online and does not appear to be suffering the same growing pains as it's partner site.

The Spanish language Obamacare enrollment website, cuidadodesalud.gov, is running smoothly in its first week online and does not appear to be suffering the same growing pains as its English-language counterpart.

On Tuesday afternoon, an error screen appeared once at the Spanish language site, offering an apology "Lo sentimos," but the problem was quickly resolved.

Logging in and getting information from cuidadodesalud.gov was fast and easy.

It's a different story at the English language site. Most attempts to log in or get information about insurance options were denied Tuesday — more than a week after the Obama Administration promised the site would be working for a "vast majority of users."

Now some experts are worried that the federal government alienated the Hispanic community by allowing technical problems to push the launch of cuidadodesalud.gov from Oct. 1 to Dec. 6, a mere 17 days before the deadline to get covered by the beginning of the new year.

"I think there is this sense of frustration," says Daniel Garza, executive director of the Libre initiative.

"There’s also neglect that they feel, just like on the issue of immigration. It’s almost systemic how this administration has almost marginalized or shoved them to the side."

But new numbers from the Transamerica Center for Health Studies suggest the site's delay hasn't had any cooling effect on the Hispanic community. The organization's latest survey, released Tuesday, shows that 5 percent of Latinos have already purchased health insurance through the new exchanges, compared to just 1 percent of the white population.

Hector de la Torre, executive director of the Transamerica Center for Health Studies offered that many Latinos will wait until the last minute to sign up.

"Having grown up in a Mexican-American household, we're not very good at RSVP'ing and doing things ahead of time," quipped Hector de la Torre.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid pledged in a January statement to "ramp up our promotional efforts to drive Spanish speakers to CuidadoDeSalud.gov."