While trying to win elections, the Democratic strategy is often perceived as combining several minorities -- including African-Americans, feminists, global warming alarmists and members of labor unions -- to pull together a winning total over Republicans, who usually try to draw more than 50 percent of the general population, a strategy that has often been hammered by liberals and members of the “mainstream” media as painting the GOP as “the party of the rich.”
However, ever since the October 1 rollout of ObamaCare, the program and its website have come under intense scrutiny for not working well, a charge that is now being brandished by Hispanics, who have usually voted Democratic but are accusing CuidadoDeSalud.gov of using computers to translate the original text from English into “Spanglish,” an “insulting” combination of the two languages.
In an article by James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal stated that it “launched more than two months late,” and even then, it was “a Web page with Spanish instructions” that “linked users to an English form."
Meanwhile, Adrian Madriz, a Miami ObamaCaution navigador, told the AP: "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."
In addition, Gabriel Sanchez, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, said that the problems have diminished the credibility of federal officials and noted that Hispanics “will look at this and think, 'Man, they really don't care about us.'"
Noah Rothman of Mediaite.com stated that “Democrats know that Republicans have a 'minority problem.'” And if the GOP had masterminded the Spanish-language version of HealthCare.gov, “they would be certain that it represents another in a long line of insults” the Republicans have hurled toward America’s 45 million Spanish speakers" since their description of how to enroll in the Affordable Care Act was “indicative of a larger, more endemic antipathy for the nation’s Hispanic community.”
However, the site was “the brainchild of the Obama White House, so these fundamental truths escape the Democratic political class and their allies in the press.” Also, Rothman indicated, it is causing Hispanics “to ponder just how pivotal they really are to Democrats’ political futures.”
Taranto added: “Data from seven states and the District of Columbia, which are running their own marketplaces, show that of more than 200,000 enrollees, nearly 22 percent are 18 to 34 years old, according to a Reuters analysis.”
“The administration had hoped that over 38 percent, or 2.7 million, of all enrollees in 2014 would be 18 to 35 [sic] years old,” he continued.
Such results were in fact entirely expected by those who warned of “adverse selection” since ObamaCare “severely limits insurers' ability to set premiums based on policyholders' risk profiles,” Taranto said. “They may not charge the already-sick more than the healthy, and their ability to charge the middle-aged more than the young is highly constrained.”
In a report posted by the National Journal, Sam Baker noted that "insurance companies had to spend a lot of money adapting to ObamaCare's botched rollout. And unless the White House intervenes, the law could penalize them for doing it."
Also, insurers "can spend only 20 percent of their premiums on overhead and profit,” Baker indicated. “Insurers argue, not unreasonably, that they should get a break to compensate them for the additional expense that the Obama administration has imposed with its incompetence and capricious interpretations of the law.”
'”Expect the unexpected' has been good advice for anyone following American economic news since 2009,” Taranto stated. “That news has usually been bad, and almost always 'unexpectedly' so.
“With a kindred spirit in the White House, liberal reporters expect (or at least hope for) good things to happen,” he said. “A cynical observer might suggest that there is an element of deliberate spin involved, with reporters hoping to keep readers' expectations afloat until next month's report.”
The Wall Street Journal reporter concluded by stating: “And wait till they hear about los paneles de la muerte (or death panels). Anyone know how to say 'You have no chance to survive' in Spanglish?”
