“It’s like putting pieces of a puzzle together,” Carothers said.

Minorities, Millennials

Get Covered Illinois, the state agency working to implement the health care law, hosted 75 events two days ago aimed at reaching uninsured people, Brian Gorman, its director of outreach and consumer education, said in an interview.

“This year we are really focusing on African-Americans, Latinos and millennials,” Gorman said. “These are the most likely to be uncovered.”

About nine of 10 uninsured people told the Kaiser Family Foundation in an October survey that they didn’t know when enrollment opened for 2015. Miranda Adams, 19, a sophomore at the University of Illinois-Champaign, said her mother had reminded her to sign up.

“I had no idea until she told me,” Adams said in an interview at the Chicago event. “I have no idea what the plans are or what’s being offered.”

In California, Peter Lee, the head of the state’s health- care exchange, has been on a 21-city bus tour to promote the open enrollment period. Between stops in East Los Angeles and Santa Ana, he said he didn’t expect “huge numbers” to enroll on the first day. Still, Covered California has said it expects 1.7 million residents to sign up this enrollment period. That would be an increase of about 500,000, or 43 percent, from 2014.

“It’s going to be tough,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “We’d rather shoot for the stars and hit the moon than not try.”

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