With open enrollment for health coverage set to begin October 23, an outreach team from the Massachusetts Health Connector spent the day walking Dorchester’s streets, urging residents to sort out their coverage now instead of waiting until the deadline.
“October 23rd is the open enrollment time, but we don’t want people to wait until the last minute,” said Guy Rancourt, who was canvassing with several colleagues from Archipelago Strategies Group (ASG), the company in charge of marketing and outreach for MassHealth Connector. “We want you to get out there now and start exploring, figure out what your options are — and there are a lot of options, and there’s a lot of financial help.” The message, he told CTN, is simply “to let people know that now is the time to start thinking about your health coverage.”
The team’s first reassurance to residents is about cost. “There is no cost associated with it. We are a free resource,” Rancourt said, describing the service as a way to “ask questions, get questions answered, and find out what’s the best policy for you and how you can move forward to make sure that you’re covered in the following year.”
Rancourt was blunt about the risk of letting the window pass. “If you miss the deadline, the risk is not having health insurance — and you can never tell when there’s going to be a problem,” he said. Waiting, he added, also costs money: “It’s exponentially more expensive if you miss the deadline and you have to try to do it after the fact.” The danger, he explained, is ending up “in a position where the open enrollment date ends and then you can’t get any coverage at all.”
For families who put it off, that can mean a gap with no easy fix until the next enrollment period — which is why the team’s pitch is to get informed early, compare plans, and lock in coverage before the rush.
A central part of the message in Dorchester — a neighborhood home to large Haitian, Cape Verdean and other immigrant communities — was that language is not a barrier. “The website has multiple languages,” Rancourt said. “If you don’t speak English, you don’t have to worry. You can come to our site, and we’ll be able to translate things for you and get you the information you need in your native language.” The team shared a QR code and web link that residents can use to get started on their own or connect with someone who can help.
Rancourt said the decision to canvass in person, rather than rely on ads, was deliberate. “We feel like a community walk is a good way to get out there — you get to meet the people, you get into the community,” he said. “It’s not just throwing up a commercial or putting up a website. It’s giving people the option to talk to somebody, see some flyers, have a URL or a QR code right there in the businesses that they go to every day.”
The team fanned out across Codman Square and nearby blocks, posting flyers in storefront windows and leaving materials with shop owners. “We have about two dozen, maybe three dozen businesses that we’re canvassing,” Rancourt said, adding that the “leave-behinds” are meant to travel home: “Talk about it with your family, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your grandparents — you’ll have that resource right there, and you can go online and get all the information you need.”
The reception, he acknowledged, is a work in progress, which is the point of knocking on doors. “That’s the challenge — that’s why we’re out here,” he said. Residents need to know “number one, the open enrollment period is coming up, and number two, don’t wait till the last minute.”
Asked what he most wanted CTN’s audience to take away, Rancourt kept it simple: “We are a free resource, we are here to help, and we have all the answers to all of your questions.”
https://www.mahealthconnector.org/
AI Use Policy:
Some of CTN’s journalists are not native English speakers and draft their work in French or Haitian Creole. We then use AI-assisted translation software to produce the English versions, and traces of machine-generated phrasing may occasionally remain. Every article — in any language — is written, reviewed, and edited by CTN’s staff writers and editors, who remain responsible for its accuracy. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
