(Bloomberg) — About 11.4 million people signed up for Obamacare or renewed their coverage for 2015, raising the possibility that enrollment may surpass the administration's goal in the second year of the program.

Enrollment closed Feb. 15 for coverage through health plans offered on the marketplace created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. People signing up for insurance must pay their first premium to complete enrollment and gain coverage. The Obama administration hopes to have at least 9.1 million people paying for coverage bought through government-run marketplaces this year.

"It gives you some sense of how hungry people were out there for affordable, accessible health insurance," President Barack Obama said Tuesday in a video on Facebook with Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the U.S. health secretary, announcing the enrollment figure. "The Affordable Care Act is working. It's working a little better than we anticipated; certainly a lot better than many of the critics talked about early on."