On the Spanish version of the ACA website, “the translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated.” Ezra sighs:
Hispanics are particularly crucial to Obamacare’s success. About 15 million Hispanics — or more than 31 percent of the U.S.’s total Hispanic population — are uninsured. That’s a higher rate of uninsurance than for whites (13 percent) or blacks (21 percent). And because the median age for Hispanics in the U.S. is 27 while it’s 37 for the rest of the population, many of those uninsured Hispanics are the young, healthy applicants that Obamacare desperately needs to sign up.
It is hard to believe that the same team that won two elections is so hampered by federal contracting rules that it can produce something like this. There are worse examples of how government cannot do many things right – but this one, run by technocrats, with plenty of time to prep, will loom large in the public’s imagination for some time. Meanwhile, Suderman parses the replacement of Healthcare.gov’s contractor:
Given the troubled rollout of the health law’s online exchange system last year, this is not entirely surprising. But it also suggests that despite the administration’s happy progress reports, all is not entirely well with the federal exchange system, which covers 36 states. As the Post notes, “the administration’s decision to end the contract with CGI reflects lingering unease over the performance of HealthCare.gov.” The move suggests that remaining problems may be bigger than the White House is letting on. Accenture, which built California’s state-run exchange, does not have any prior experience with federal health IT systems. In other words, federal officials decided that CGI’s performance was still so poor that it was worth the considerable startup and transition costs of switching to an entirely new technology firm.
The Dish 