With the beginning of the third open enrollment season under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in about six weeks, Obama administration officials on Tuesday said that they would focus efforts to spread out the health coverage to the uninsured in Dallas, Houston, northern New Jersey, Chicago and Miami.

In a speech at Howard University Hospital, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, said that over all, this open enrollment period will be tougher than past year. She noted that many uninsured have already signed up, shrinking the pool of eligible people who are not under coverage.

She said that with that improvement in our economy, more people can be covered under employer plans.

Ms. Burwell said the administration is going to focus on 10.5 million uninsured Americans. These have been eligible for coverage through the public insurance exchanges, also called marketplaces. The enrollment period will be running from November 1 through January 31, 2016. She has encouraged Americans to prepare for the same.

Ms. Burwell said that at the end of the year, they are expecting that 9.1 million individuals will have active coverage through the marketplace, the federal and state exchanges where consumers can shop for insurance. The number is down as compared to 10.2 million at the end of March and 9.9 million at June end. A few people failed to pay their premiums, and some could not adequately answer federal questions regarding their citizenship or immigration status.

Ms. Burwell hasn’t stated a numerical goal for enrollment in the next year. In March, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that enrollment through the exchanges would reach 11 million in 2015 and 21 million in 2016.