MIAMI (CBSMiami) People who have tried to sign up for insurance on the Spanish version of the federal health care website have run into their own set of difficulties. <\/p>\n
First off the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late. <\/p>\n
Another problem, a Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form. Also, translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated the name of the site itself can literally be read for the caution of health. <\/p>\n
When you get into the details of the plans, its not all written in Spanish. Its 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. <\/p>\n
The issues with the site underscore the halting efforts across the nation to get Spanish-speakers enrolled under the federal health care law. Critics say that as a result of various problems, including those related to the website, many people whom the law was designed to help have been left out of the first wave of coverage. <\/p>\n
Federal officials say they have been working to make the site better and plan further improvements soon. Also, administrators say they welcome feedback and try to fix typos or other errors quickly. <\/p>\n
We launched consumer-friendly Spanish online enrollment tools on CuidadoDeSalud.gov in December which represents one more way for Latinos to enroll in Marketplace plans, said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Richard Olague in an email. Since the soft-launch, we continue to work closely with key stakeholders to get feedback in order to improve the experience for those consumers that use the website. <\/p>\n
Still, efforts to enroll Spanish-speakers have fallen short in several states with large Hispanic populations, and critics say the translated version of HealthCare.gov could have helped boost those numbers. <\/p>\n
In Florida, federal health officials have not said how many of the states nearly 18,000 enrollees for October and November were Latino, but that group accounts for about one-third of the roughly 3.5 million uninsured people in the state. About 1.2 million people in the state speak only Spanish. <\/p>\n
Across the U.S., about 12 percent of the 317 million people in the country speak only Spanish, but federal officials have said less than 4 percent of calls to a national hotline were Spanish-only as of last month. <\/p>\n
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Spanish Speakers Frustrated By Federal Health Care Website<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MIAMI (CBSMiami) People who have tried to sign up for insurance on the Spanish version of the federal health care website have run into their own set of difficulties. First off the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late. Another problem, a Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form. Continue reading