Healthcare.gov en Español - CuidadoDeSalud.gov, the Spanish-Language Version, Is Finally Up and Running

Hispanics are one of the youngest, fastest growing demographics in the United States. It's a perfect demographic to keep the Affordable Care Act afloat, since in order for Obamacare to work, young, healthy people have to enter the health insurance marketplace.

But, as we all know for the English speaking population, the Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov, was atrocious for the first few months, making it nearly impossible to actually sign up in a healthcare insurance exchange. Well, the same went for the Spanish-language website, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, which was second in line after the main ACA website to get a retooling.

Complicating the attempt to sign up Hispanics for the Affordable Care Act is the fact that Hispanic health and community centers said in July that there weren't enough funds to carry out the analogue, non website-dependent sign-up process for the 10 million Latinos who are eligible for Obamacare.

But now renovations to the Spanish-language counterpart of Healthcare.gov have been completed, and the administration is waiting with bated breath to find out how many young Latinos enter the healthcare market.

According to Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, as of Thursday, "The CuidadoDeSalud.gov site is live people are enrolling through it. We've gone essentially what we're calling a soft launch which is an initial period where we're working with stakeholders and key folks to make sure we are getting feedback on how well it's working. But essentially the enrollment process online is now available."

Despite being a "soft launch," the Spanish-language healthcare website's availability beats previous estimates, which had a launch pegged for as late as January. Latino health advocacy groups and experts have seen the availability of a Spanish-language counterpart to Healthcare.gov as essential to drive Hispanic enrollment in the insurance exchanges. 

"We want the English language web page to be up and running and to be successful. Once we have that, then we want the Spanish language one to be up and running," Jane Delgado of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health told the Associated Press in earlier in Dec. "People are frustrated when they can't complete enrollment."

"The Spanish website, that's a biggie for me, because we're finding that a lot of people would prefer to communicate in Spanish and want bilingual information," Frank Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Health Forum in Austin, Texas, said to The Daily Beast earlier this week. "That needs to be fixed, and quickly."

Much more needs to be done to expand Spanish-language access to healthcare options. Many state-run exchanges don't have support for Spanish-language speakers, and some are not even fully functional yet, anyway. One big example is the state-run exchange in New York. It is English-only, and looks to remain that way for the time being.

But according to a study released this week by the Transamerica Center for Health Studies, there's less work to be done, compared to other demographic populations, on raising awareness in the Latino community for the Affordable Care Act. Despite all of the difficulties in the English and Spanish-language websites, five percent of Latinos have already purchased insurance through the new exchanges, compared to just one percent of the white population. Julie Bataille, spokesperson for Health and Human Services, told reporters in Nov. that the administration is paying attention to its Latino constituents: "Reaching out to members of the Latino community in particular is something that is top of mind for us."