GUEST POST: Julie Bataille, Director, Office of Communications, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Today’s release of the final Enrollment Report for the first open enrollment period shows that over 8 million consumers enrolled in quality health coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace.  These results clearly demonstrate that the affordable coverage offered through the Marketplace is what Americans need and want. 

These numbers were also achieved thanks, in part, to an unprecedented public outreach and education campaign to increase awareness among the uninsured about the new Marketplace, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, in communities across the country.

Over the course of the initial open enrollment period, HHS officials, Federal agencies across the government, members of the Administration, and our partners outside of government, engaged in a combination of outreach strategies—including traditional media, social media, community-based outreach, and in-person assistance—to help uninsured Americans get the information they needed to find health coverage that meets their needs and budget.  The campaign also focused on those populations that would most benefit from access to affordable coverage, including ethnic and racial minorities.

Let me share some of our key efforts with you:

• Our efforts included over 7,700 outreach and enrollment activities across the country—including over 2,100 activities in Latino communities, and over 1,700 activities in African-American communities.
• Over the course of Open Enrollment, more than 28,000 in-person assisters were trained, and they reached more than 2.4 million consumers through events, outreach activities, and storefront locations.  Over 4.7 million consumers were helped by more than 14,000 assistors at Community Health Centers nationwide.
• Our Call Center supported more than 20.6 million calls from FFM states, including 1.2 million in Spanish, and more than 114,000 calls in other languages. Additionally, millions of people visited HealthCare.gov.
• We launched Marketplace Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in both English and Spanish, and netted over 327,000 Facebook Fans in English and an additional 55,000 Fans in Spanish.
• In our partnership work, more than 1,900 national, state, and local organizations in every state signed on to become “Champions for Coverage,” and worked to increase awareness and understanding of the Marketplace, as well as Medicaid and CHIP.  

Taken together, our outreach and education efforts during this first open enrollment period significantly raised awareness about the Marketplace and its benefits; ensured that consumers had the information and assistance they needed to apply for and enroll in quality coverage; and contributed to over 8 million enrollees. As we begin to work on year two, we plan to build on this success and the lessons learned over the past months to reach even more Americans who stand to benefit from the security of quality, affordable coverage.