"With this one, your child with pre-existing conditions will get the care he needs, if and only if your father is Jimmy Kimmel, otherwise you might be screwed," he said.Jimmy Kimmel is once again pleading with Congress not to pass the most recent last-ditch effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and said that Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the sponsors of the repeal efforts, "lied right to my face" about his intentions on health care reform.
During the opening monologue at Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday night, he slammed Senator Bill Cassidy, who appeared on the show back in May and touted what he called "the Jimmy Kimmel test," which Kimmel explains is an idea — which Cassidy said he would support in any future bills — that no child should be denied health care, emergency or otherwise, because the family cannot afford it.
Kimmel's nearly 5-month-old son, William "Billy" Kimmel, was born with congenital heart disease and had to undergo open-heart surgery at just 3 days old.
Calling Cassidy "not very honest," Kimmel explained the new bill introduced last week by Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey Graham does pass the Kimmel test, but with a key difference. "With this one, your child with pre-existing conditions will get the care he needs, if and only if your father is Jimmy Kimmel, otherwise you might be screwed," he said.
He claimed that this new bill does not do any of the things Cassidy had promised — including coverage for all, no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, lower premiums for middle-class families, and no lifetime caps. "Not only did Bill Cassidy fail the Jimmy Kimmel test — he failed the Bill Cassidy test. He failed his own test."
Calling the bill worse than previous versions that Republican Senators John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski "torpedoed over the summer," he urged politicians to shut the new bill down, too. "I hope they have the courage and good sense to do that again with this one," he said.
He also pleaded with the American people, urging people to call their representatives in Congress. "Most of the Congresspeople who vote on this won’t even read it. And they want us to do the same thing. They want us to treat it like an iTunes service agreement."
Kimmel continued, "I never imagined that I would get involved in something like this. This is not my area of expertise. My area of expertise is eating pizza. And that’s really about it. But we can’t let them do this to our children and our senior citizens and our veterans — or to any of us."
Kimmel first opened up about his son's health complications on his show in May, and at the time referenced President Donald Trump’s proposed $6 billion cut in funding to the National Institute of Health and said he was relieved “our congressmen made a deal last night not to go along with that.” He stressed that politicians on both sides of the aisle should come together in providing everyone with access to health insurance.
And for those that think he is using his son's health problems for political reasons, he has a message for them: "And by the way, before you post a nasty Facebook message saying I’m politicizing my son’s health problems, I want you to know that I am politicizing my son’s health problems, because I have to, because other kids have health problems. My family has health insurance. We don’t have to worry about this. But other people don't, so you can shove your disgusting comments where your doctor won’t be giving you a prostate exam once they take your health care benefits away."
Watch the clip below.