A nonprofit organization that ran a major promotional effort last year to encourage uninsured Mainers to sign up for benefits under the Affordable Care Act is gearing up for another ad campaign to begin after the November elections.
The Maine Health Access Foundation spent $600,000 on marketing and advertising, including for the enroll207.com website. Wendy Wolf, the organization’s president and CEO, said Thursday the foundation considered cutting the advertising campaign in half for 2014-15, but ultimately decided against the reduction.
“You only get one chance to do this right,” she said. “This is our moment in time, and we need to make hay while we can.”
Because Maine did not set up its own insurance marketplace through the health law, the state’s federal funding for advertising was limited. Under the Affordable Care Act, states that ran their own marketplaces received much more funding per capita than states that let the federal government run the site, Wolf said.
That’s when the foundation stepped in to help raise awareness, Wolf said. But even with the foundation money, Maine’s advertising budget did not approach that of states like West Virginia, Colorado or Washington.
The health insurance marketplace allows individuals – often self-employed or part-time employees without health insurance – to compare plans, shop for coverage and qualify for help in buying it.
Even though Maine did not spend much to promote the law, enrollment exceeded first-year expectations, with more than 44,000 people choosing a marketplace plan. About 10 percent of Mainers were uninsured in 2012, before the marketplace opened, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, compared to 15 percent in the United States. A Gallup poll released in July found that the U.S. uninsured rate has declined to 13.4 percent in 2014, although state-by-state figures are not yet available.
The foundation spent money on its website, and television, print and online media.
Wolf said her group decided it needed fresh ads this year.
“The first wave were those ready and willing to sign up for insurance,” Wolf said. “The next group is going to be a tougher nut to crack.