Rural Affordable Care Act Outreach and Enrollment: What We Learned During the First Marketplace Open Enrollment Period

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act) of 2010, 2 new opportunities for health care coverage were established for many uninsured individuals beginning on January 1, 2014. The first opportunity was through Medicaid expansion where states had the opportunity to expand Medicaid coverage to individuals with household incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. The second opportunity was through the establishment of Health Insurance Marketplaces where individuals could purchase private health plans and potentially qualify for financial assistance in paying for their plans. The Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP) provided supplemental grant awards to help stimulate Affordable Care Act outreach and education efforts in rural communities that were being served by the Rural Health Care Services Outreach (Outreach) Grant Program. As a result, Outreach grantees enrolled 9,300 rural Americans during the initial Open Enrollment period. Valuable outreach and enrollment lessons were learned from rural communities based on discussions with the Outreach grantees who received the supplemental funding. These lessons will help rural communities prepare for the next Open Enrollment period.