Tipsheet

Obamacare's Spanish-Language Website Full of Errors

The problems, glitches, etc. with Healthcare.gov were well-known and well-documented. Now, attention has shifted to the issues with CuidadoDeSalud.gov, the Spanish-language version of the site—namely, that the website is so poorly translated that native Spanish speakers cannot decipher it without help.

The website launched two months behind schedule, and is riddled with grammatical errors and clumsy wording. Even Obamacare cheerleaders navigators have described the language as "Spanglish."

“When you get into the details of the plans, it’s not all written in Spanish. It’s written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them,” said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.

Other issues with the site include links to forms in English.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, very few people have actually signed up for a plan using the Spanish site. California, for instance, has over 4.3 million exclusively Spanish-speaking citizens, but only 5,500 people have signed up for Obamacare using CuidadoDeSalud.gov. Minority groups were often touted as having low-levels of health insurance, so it's questionable why the website designed to assist them in finding a plan would be so horribly botched.

Let's just add this to another long list of problems with Obamacare.