Obamacare enrollment went much better this year, but the Obama administration is still struggling to reach highly uninsured minority populations.
The percentage of Latino enrollees remained flat compared to last year — at 11 percent — while the share of black enrollees fell, from 17 percent to 14 percent, according to data released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Minorities, and Latinos in particular, have higher uninsured rates than whites, so advocates for the Affordable Care Act prioritized outreach to them this year. Latino outreach hit some bumps during the 2014 enrollment season, as the launch of the Spanish-language version of healthcare.gov was delayed.
While officials acknowledged the lack of percentage gains among Latinos and blacks, they said that may not give the whole picture since more enrollees this year declined to state their race when signing up for insurance plans. And they emphasized that more Latinos are enrolled in health plans this year even if they don’t make up a larger share of enrollees.
“Even though the percentage stayed the same for Latinos, the absolute number did go up,” said Meena Seshamani, director of HHS’ Office of Health Reform. “We also need to look at the overall uninsured rate and how that has gone down to a historic low.”
Young people are the other major group Affordable Care Act advocates have targeted, as they tend to be healthier and can thereby drive premiums down. Just like last year, they make up 28 percent of total enrollees. Many had worried that enrollment among young adults would lag, but officials said they think an adequate number have signed up.
“In terms of the number of young people enrolled, we feel pretty good where we are with that,” said Kevin Griffis, HHS’ acting assistant secretary for public affairs.
The data was included in a detailed snapshot of 2015 enrollment the administration released Tuesday. Earlier this week, it was announced that 11.7 million Americans have signed up for health insurance plans on either healthcare.gov or state-run insurance marketplaces.
