Frater Ben Williamowsky at Capitol Hill News Conference
WASHINGTON, May 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Barbara Kennelly of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and Dr. Ben Williamowsky of Silver Spring, Md., a Medicare recipient, held a news conference today to discuss benefits of and misconceptions about the Affordable Care Act and Medicare.
The participants highlighted a four-page brochure, Medicare and the New Health Care Law, What it Means for You, which was mailed by HHS this week to seniors. It outlines the benefits for Medicare recipients in the new health insurance reform law.
Below are Speaker Pelosi's opening remarks and selected quotes from each of the other participants:
Speaker Pelosi Opening Remarks:
Good afternoon. I know you are out there. [Laughter.] Good afternoon.
And a good afternoon it is when we have the Secretary of Health and
Human Services with us at the Capitol--Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a
champion in promoting health care for all Americans as a right, not a
privilege. I am here with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. A special guest for all of us, Dr. Ben Williamowsky, a retired dentist and local senior. Steny will introduce him, but I want to say that my father gave him his diploma from dental school in 1948.
Dr. Ben
Williamowsky:
"I am here because I
support the Affordable Care Act, and I believe it is important for
seniors like
myself to understand how the legislation will improve Medicare in the
future."
"There are a lot of
reasons why I believe the Affordable Care Act will be good for Medicare.
And I also believe it
will be
good for my family, and that's a thought I would like to leave you
today. People
ask me, people my friends who are one of the anti-groups, who will say:
'What is
it going to do for you? Why are you so much in favor of this bill?' I
said:
'Well, I will tell you two very important things it is going to do for
me.
Number one, it is going to allow me to live out my life.
...And the other reason I
give them is this, we have a granddaughter--Minna and I, Minna is in the
audience--who at the age of three had a malignant brain tumor. She was
operated
on. She has gone through treatments all of her life. She is now 25 and
functioning fairly well, but still under the care and treatment from
time to
time. She is 25 years old. She has been taken care of on her parents'
health
insurance. Now without this bill, what was going to happen when she was
26? When
they could not find a job for her that has health benefits to pay that?
When she
could not have it any longer under her parents' insurance? She would be
cut off
without insurance at the age of 26 and be faced with a terrible,
terrible
dilemma and challenges to her going on in her life. Now I can say that
she can,
with this bill, that she can get health insurance and it will not be
dependent
on any pre-existing conditions"
SOURCE Office of the
Speaker of the House
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