Obama Care

“No me digas”: The Obama Care website “habla Spanglish”!

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Why is anyone surprised?   The Spanish Obama Care website is a mess!

The Obama Care website is frustrating Spanish speakers:

“The site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.

A Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form.

And the 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.”

“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.

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.

The article also goes on to explain that enrollment is way down.

My guess is way down because of it is too expensive.  Too many “hispanos” bought into the nonsense that Obama Care would be paid by the rich!

They are slowly finding out they are the rich!

As our parents learned in Cuba, be careful with the charlatan who promises by playing class warfare.  It usually ends up hurting the exact people cheering the speech at the rally.

Again, just ask our parents about socialist demagoguery!

 

Donde esta la “guagua?”: We have to throw another one under the bus!

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Let’s throw another one under the bus.   It’s getting very crowded down there.

Let’s place it right next to the one about keeping your own policy!   And not far from Rev Wright!

According to Peter Suderman, another one of the reasons for The Affordable Health Care Act has met reality:

“Supporters of Obamacare have long pitched the law as a way to address emergency room crowding caused by lack of health coverage. Individuals without health coverage, the thinking goes, have no place to turn when they need medical attention, and as a result they head to the emergency room.

That creates crowding, which can strain medical resources. It’s also more expensive than an ordinary trip to the doctor.

The theory was that by giving people insurance, Obamacare could mitigate this problem, allowing more people to skip emergency care facilities by relying on less crowded, less expensive doctors offices instead.

President Obama pitched a version of this idea in a speech last September, arguing that emergency room visits by the uninsured represented a hidden tax on everyone else. “When uninsured people who can afford to get health insurance don’t, and then they get sick or they get hit by a car, and they show up at the emergency room, who do you think pays for that?” he asked.

But the best evidence has never really supported the hope that the law would reduce emergency room usage.

That’s because much of the law’s expanded coverage comes via Medicaid, the jointly run federal-state program for the low income and disabled.

And Medicaid beneficiaries tend to visit the emergency room more often than the uninsured.”

Another point to remember is that “the uninsured” are not signing up anyway:  A recent Gallup poll confirmed that Most Uninsured Americans Ignoring Health Exchange Sites!

Donde esta la guagua? We have a few more things to throw under the bus!

 

The ObamaCare roll-out is officially designated “un arroz con mango”

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One of my favorite Cuban expressions is “arroz con mango”,  or a very sticky or messy situation.  Frankly, everything about “the roll out” has the look of a disaster, or “un arroz con mango” as we say in “cubano”.

ObamaCare was destined for disaster because it was never openly discussed in Congress, i.e. no open hearings.

No experts were brought in to argue for this and that.  Instead, it was rushed through Congress and passed in the Senate by offering special arrangements to Senators.

Remember The Louisiana Purchase?  or that special “Cornhusker kickback”?  The Obama administration had to use these tactics to pass the bill.  They passed the bill in the House by 4 or 5 votes despite having a 40-plus majority!

Today, we can tell you that the roll out has been a disaster, from “glitches” to so called “isolated” problems.

According to insurance industry sources, the problems are not “isolated” at all:

“An executive of the largest contractor working on the federal health insurance exchange web site told Congress Thursday that problems with erroneous enrollment information being transferred to insurance companies were “isolated” – a claim later echoed by an Obama administration official.

But insurance industry officials have told the Washington Examiner that this is simply not true. The problems – such as duplicate enrollments being sent from the federal system to insurers, incorrect cancellations, and spouses being mixed up as children – were in fact being widely encountered across the insurance industry.”

Furthermore, we hear of a “tech surge”, or an additional commitment of technical personnel to make the web site work.

The jury is still out:  Will the surge work or are we just throwing more money away:

“President Obama’s “tech surge” to turn around the failing HealthCare.gov is running into concerns that the administration could be throwing “good money after bad” while complicating an already complicated situation.

Tech experts who spoke with FoxNews.com say that, like any good military strategy, this “surge” is not just about the number of soldiers, but how they’re used. The administration’s plan to enlist a team of experts and specialists from both the private and public sector could be a big waste of money if they aren’t used correctly.

“If you start throwing people in and start having them just fixing bugs it could be a recipe for disaster where you end up with more bugs than when you started,” explained James Turner, a member of the technical staff at software company Beeonics and contributing editor at O’Reilly.com.”

Last, but not least, we hear that the website may not be ready until the end of November:

“The Obama administration said Friday it will take until the end of November for the new federal health insurance Web site to be fully fixed, and that a private contracting firm would be managing the effort.”

Let’s officially call the ObamaCare rollout one nasty “arroz con mango”.

My question is very simple:  Who cooked this “arroz con mango”?

Who is going to be held responsible for this very expensive and embarassing “arroz con mango”?

P.S.   Click here for our discussion with James Yardley, contributor to American Thinker.

The Ted Cruz Democrats! (a.k.a. “Cubanito Cruz” que bueno baila usted!)

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Last month, Senator Cruz was called every name in the book for suggesting that ObamaCare should be repealed, or at least defunded.

Despite the vicious attacks, Senator Ted Cruz fought on because he understood just how unpopular Obama Care is outside of Washington.

Where are we now?

Today, red state Democrats have decided to call for delays:

“Lawmakers are pressing to extend the deadline beyond March 31 after the troubled roll out of Obamacare raised concerns that people might not be able to sign up in time to avoid the $95 fine that jumps to $695 by 2016.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who faces re-election next year, wrote to President Obama, noting the glitch-plagued roll out that began Oct. 1 and asked him to extend the deadline beyond March 31.
“The difficulty that people in New Hampshire and in other states that are relying on the federally facilitated marketplaces are experiencing is incredibly frustrating and disappointing,” Shaheen wrote. “For over three years, we have been waiting for the creation of the health insurance exchanges, which now in their fourth week of existence, are riddled with problems.”
Backing Shaheen are Sens. Mark Begich, D-Ala., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., two more more vulnerabP.S. le Democrats from red states facing competitive re-election bids next year.
Pryor, considered the most vulnerable Democratic Senator, said in a statement that “it makes sense” to extend the deadline and that the Obama administration “should state clearly how the enforcement mechanism will work if people can’t sign up in time.” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is not up for re-election but whose state is more purple than blue, said he and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., would introduce legislation to delay the health care law’s individual mandate by a year.”

Will The White House call them reckless and irresponsible?  Terrorists and arsonists?

Yes, it’s true that these red-state Democrats are looking out for themselves. They are also hearing from constituents, specially after the ObamaCare web site fiasco!  They are not hearing anything pretty from angry taxpayers who can’t understand why the Obama administration spent $600 million on a website that doesn’t work.

Let’s welcome and cheer the first class of “Ted Cruz Democrats”!

For more on these Democrats, check out Kimberley Straeel at The Wall Street Journal:

“The pressure for other Democrats to join will rise, as will the pressure for the party to embrace more extensive changes to the law.”

Yes, slowly but surely they will become Ted Cruz Democrats, i.e. people who come to their senses about this horrific law!

 

Maybe the ObamaCare website “no sirve” because it speaks 150 languages!

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We learned from President Obama’s “call this 1-800 number” speech that ObamaCare can speak 150 languages.

I guess that you can call the 1-800 number and push a button to speak to someone who can help you in one of these 150 languages.

Let me tell you the truth:  I did not know that there were 150 languages in the US.    How in the world did they find customer service people who can speak that many languages?  Also, did anyone test these people?  How do we know that they can even speak the language they claim to speak?

Also, whatever happened to the idea that you have learn English if you come to the US?

Shouldn’t we expect people to learn English or try to learn English?

Didn’t our parents have to learn English or at least try to communciate in English?

We do know that “the Spanish version” is a mess, too, according to my friends at Babalu.

Spanish and English are down.  Wonder how the other 148 are doing?

 

President “Nadie me dice nada” Obama

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According to The Washington Post, nobody told President Obama:

“The problem here isn’t just technological. It’s managerial.
The White House’s senior staff — up to and including the president — was blindsided.
Staffers deep in the process knew that HealthCare.gov wasn’t ready for primetime.
But those frustrations were hidden from top-level managers.
Somewhere along the chain the information was spun, softened, or just plain buried.
The result was that the White House didn’t know the truth about its own top initiative — and so they were unprepared for the disastrous launch. They didn’t even know they needed to be lowering expectations.
In any normal corporation, heads would roll over a managerial failure of such magnitude and consequence.”

Sorry but there is something really weird about this Obama administration:

1) 2,000 high powered ATF weapons fly south over the US-Mexico border and no one tells AG Holder or President Obama;

2) The IRS decides to target conservative groups and nobody tells President Obama that he has a huge IRS scandal brewing; and,

3) The rollout of ObamaCare is full of problems and nobody tells President Obama.

My conclusion is that we need new staffers or maybe a new president.

P.S. You can hear CANTO TALK here.

Why didn’t we hire “the best and the brightest” in the first place?

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Has anybody seen Secretary Sebelius?  She is apparently up in Massachusetts and avoiding any serious questions about this disaster known as the ObamaCare roll out.

She did say that the search is on for “the best and the brightest”, i.e. the top tech people in the country to fix the Affordable Health Care Act website.

My question is this:  Why didn’t we hire the best and brightest before?  What was that $600 million contract for?  Did we pay top dollar for the B-team?

Perphaps “the best and the brightest” wanted no part of this for two reasons:

1) This is not really about health care.  This is about expanding the role of government into areas such as the doctor-patient relationship.

2) The “best and brightest” understood just how complex this enterprise was going to be, as Ezra Klein reported today:

“HealthCare.gov is monstrously complex. The Times reports that there’s more than 500 million lines of code — of which more than 5 million lines may need to be rewritten. And that code is interfacing with computer systems (and computer code) at the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid systems, insurers like Aetna, and more. Even the best programmers would have trouble figuring out what’s going on — much less what’s going wrong — quickly.

The truth is that the Obama administration is, to a much greater extent than it would like, dependent on the very people who built HealthCare.gov to fix it. They’re the only people who know what’s going on inside the system.”

This is a mess!

Maybe this is why CNN has disapproval for ObamaCare is at 56%!.

And Gallup has President Obama’s approval at 44%!