Jimmy Kimmel Offers Personal And Tearful Plea On Obamacare

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's Monday monologue was still being aired across the cable spectrum Tuesday, not because it was so hilariously funny but because it was so emotionally raw. Departing from his usual schtick, Kimmel struggled through tears as he told the audience about the birth of his son, Billy, less than two weeks ago. The baby was born with a heart murmur and shortly after entering the world began to turn purple.

Emergency surgery saved the boy.

The connection between health insurance and pre-existing conditions was not lost on the host. Under a Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions — as relatively mild as controllable asthma and as serious as breast cancer — would likely be priced out of the insurance market in many states. (For more political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Amber Phillips of The Washington Post has a succinct analysis of the current Republican plan:

They are considering a bill that would allow states to allow insurers to charge sick people as much as they want for health insurance. Technically, health insurers couldn't refuse sick people insurance (like they could pre-Obamacare). But practically, sick people probably will be priced out of insurance under this legislation, since insurers could charge whatever they want, said Gary Claxton, a health-care policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

For Kimmel, the message of that bill is clear: Partisanship has taken the place of human decency.

“Before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you would never be able to get health insurance because you had a preexisting condition,” Kimmel said, referring to the years before Obamacare made it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against patients with pre-existing conditions. “You were born with a preexisting condition, and if your parents didn’t have medical insurance, you might not even live long enough to get denied because of a preexisting condition."

Struggling to get through the segment, Kimmel continued.

“If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s something now, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, or something else, we all agree on that, right? Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whoever you support, we need to make sure that people who are supposed to represent us — and people who are meeting about this right now in Washington — understand that very clearly. Let’s stop with the nonsense. This isn’t football, there are no teams. We are the team, it’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants. We need to take care of each other.”

President Obama later tweeted out his approval of the segment: "Well said, Jimmy," he wrote. "That's exactly why we fought so hard for the ACA, and why we need to protect it for kids like Billy. And congratulations!"

Photo: Kevin Winter / Staff / Getty Images Entertainment