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Kathleen Sebelius, Visiting Dallas, Talks About Health Care Overhaul

In just a few days, Texans will be able to start going online to check out health insurance options as part of the Affordable Care Act. And today an all-star cast headlined by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius came to Dallas to pitch the new marketplace. 

They're discussing community outreach and education about the Affordable Care Act. The event started at 9:45 this morning at Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic on Singleton Boulevard in Dallas.

The healthcare measure originally required all states to enroll citizens making less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level in Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care program for the poor and disabled. But Gov. Rick Perry has rejected all proposals to expand Medicaid, a system he calls broken.

That means those who can't afford health insurance could turn to subsidized private coverage in a federally run Texas marketplace.

Sebelius visited Houston and Austin last month to address the new law.
 

KERA's Lauren Silverman (on Twitter @lsilverwoman) is covering the event.

Here are excerpts of some of her tweets:

--Sebelius says she is "eager to continue conversation" on expanding Medicaid in Texas.

--"This is not government insurance, these are private plans," Sebelius says about health insurance marketplace.

--Rawlings: "Ask not what your country can do for u but what you can so for your country." Encourages youngsters to sign up for healthcare.

--Community clinics "the engines that will make us go," on healthcare in DFW, Jenkins said.

--"If Dallas Fort Worth were its own county, it would be the most uninsured county in America,"  Jenkins said.

--"These are not numbers, they're people," Mayor Rawlings says. 843,000 in Dallas and Fort Worth qualify for health care subsidies.

--"Let's go from worst to first," Mayor Rawlings says about Dallas, referring to high rate of uninsured.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Eric Aasen is KERA’s managing editor. He helps lead the station's news department, including radio and digital reporters, producers and newscasters. He also oversees keranews.org, the station’s news website, and manages the station's digital news projects. He reports and writes stories for the website and contributes pieces to KERA radio. He's discussed breaking news live on various public radio programs, including The Takeaway, Here & Now and Texas Standard, as well as radio and TV programs in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Lauren Silverman was the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She was also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine  Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.