I have people coming to me every day, coming to my office, with life-threatening diseases - life-threatening diseases - and they were dropped from their health care because of the Affordable Care Act.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've spent my life visiting a handful of people who are very close to me when they've been committed to one hospital or another in New York.
These are people - I'm for immigration - legal immigration. I've been an immigration attorney. But people who have come to our country and violated laws, we should not be providing full health care services.
I'm surviving a life-threatening illness. Many do not, such as those without celebrity and fortune who have to depend on the public healthcare system.
I worked with President Obama on the Affordable Care Act and getting health coverage to all Americans. It was my legislation that said insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for kids with preexisting conditions.
We have to bring relief as fast as possible to people who are struggling under Obamacare.
The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans.
You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C.
My family and high school friends were the only people who were with me every step of the way through my mothers' illness. They sat by my side year after year and consoled me. If they ever sent me a bill, I would be paying them off for the rest of my life.
I almost threw up the first time I set foot inside the University of California, San Francisco's Comprehensive Care Center and joined the stream of thin, slow-moving, low-voiced, gray-skinned people. I didn't want to be one of the pitied, the struck-down.
I received free health care.