The city of Jacksonville’s effort to sign up uninsured residents for health insurance helped nearly 41,000 people get coverage, but the city might have overstated how successful it was.

Duval County trailed other large metro areas on a per capita basis, and it’s impossible to determine how many of the newly insured lacked coverage in the past, Jacksonville Today found.

The city’s program, named “Get Covered Jax,” began in November to help people navigate the health care marketplace. It also provided licensed insurance brokers to get people through the application process.

At the start of the program, city officials said about 120,000 individuals in the county were uninsured. The program helped 40,726 individuals sign up for coverage during the open enrollment period, which lasted from Nov. 1, 2023, to Jan. 16, 2024.

The city considered the effort a success.

“I often say that a confused mind says ‘no,’ and this campaign provided important information for our citizens so they could say ‘yes’ to enrolling in health insurance,” Mayor Donna Deegan said.

Chief Health Officer Dr. Sunil Joshi said: “Ultimately, it’s great to see more people signing up for marketplace health insurance so that they can receive preventative care at no additional cost including yearly physical exams, screening blood work, screening mammograms, colonoscopies, prostate screens and pap smears as well as age-appropriate vaccinations. This is good news for everybody.”

But among Florida’s 67 counties, Duval ranked 11th per capita for new sign-ups and trailed Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Hillsborough counties in that regard.

Duval County had a new sign-up rate of 3,951 individuals per 100,000 residents, an analysis by Jacksonville Today shows. Osceola County had the highest rate of new signees per capita at 8,130 per 100,000 residents.

Duval ranked better in terms of new signups compared with the year before. Of the major metro markets in the state, Hillsborough County saw the largest year-over-year increase in new signups at 58%. Duval was second at 55%, Escambia third at 45%, and Alachua and Orange counties tied for fourth at 44% each.

Duval’s percentage also topped other large counties when it came to the year-over-year change in total signups, including new sign-ups and people who reenrolled.

Florida remained the top state in the country for total enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, according to federal data.

Jacksonville city officials proclaimed that all of the people it signed up had been uninsured. “As of the close of the open enrollment period, the number of new enrollees was 40,726 — a 34% decrease in the number of uninsured individuals,” the city said in a news release.

That wasn’t entirely true.

The latest health care enrollment data from the Center for Medicare Services does not show the number of previously uninsured individuals broken down by county. Dr. Xonjenese Jacobs, director of Florida covering kids & families at the USF college of public health, said people who sign up for health insurance were not necessarily uninsured in the past.

New enrollees could have been people going back to school and working part time; people who recently retired before qualifying for Medicare; young people who were no longer eligible to be on their parents’ health plans; people who received a tax credit to reduce their health care costs; or someone who shopped around and found a better deal, Jacobs said.

Jacobs is associated with Covering Florida, an organization that provides outreach and enrollment services to people looking to sign up for health care through the health care marketplace. “We’re seeing a shift in the landscape of where people are prioritizing,” she said.

She said she is always pleased with an increase in the number of new people signed up for health insurance. Any increase means a healthier community overall, she said.

“Some of the pieces that we recognize is when individuals do not have access to health care is that they may misuse or underutilize the resources that are available to them,” Jacobs said. “When we talk about the misuse, we see individuals who use the emergency room as their source of primary health care, rather than understanding that you need a primary care provider that can diagnose your cold.”

Joshi, the chief health officer, noted that the numbers of insured and uninsured individuals will fluctuate during any given period of time as new people move to the area, people leave the area, people join the workforce, people leave the workforce and life circumstances change.

“The bottom line is by signing up nearly 41,000 people during the 10-week open enrollment period, we have significantly reduced the percentage of folks who are uninsured in the region compared to the start of the campaign,” Joshi said. “We are even more excited that approximately 50% more people have signed up for marketplace insurance in Duval County compared to last year” — 163,000 versus 109,000. That compared to a 30% increase for the entire state of Florida.

If you need coverage

• If you’ve had a major life event, such as getting married or losing health care coverage, you can sign up outside of the open enrollment period by going to CoveringFlorida.org or by calling them at 877-813-9115.

• You also can find health care resources from local and national organizations through the city’s Get Covered Jax website.

The next open enrollment period will begin Nov. 1, 2024.

This story was updated April 12, 2024, with additional data and comments from Jacksonville’s chief health officer, Dr. Sunil Joshi.