Paul Tonko: “There's nothing more powerful than the faces that put a real life meaning into the work that we've done here. Let me…”

“There's nothing more powerful than the faces that put a real life meaning into the work that we've done here. Let me talk about a constituent, actually a family of constituents from Albany, New York. Ellena Young is a very young mom and has a 1-year-old son, Liev, and she's a three-time cancer survivor. There's a history of cancer in her family. And in the latter half of 2009, her husband, Bill, testified at our health care forum because his wife was having complications with her pregnancy and required bed rest. Well, as you can imagine with preexisting conditions, she was in and out of insurance coverage and very often was struggling to find ways that they could get the family covered. Her preexisting condition complicated that severely. The way she found health care coverage was as a Ph.D. student hooking herself and her family to the university plan. They were thrilled about the news of the pregnancy. She was in remission. They had all of this hope going for them. She then developed complications with her pregnancy--situations with malnutrition, severe iron deficiency, and, yes, even blood clots--all of which were life threatening.”