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Jimmy Kimmel is once again entering the health-care fray and using his monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live to hold conservative politicians’ feet to the fire as they try mightily to strip health-care benefits from millions of Americans. On Tuesday night’s show, Kimmel took aim at Senator Bill Cassidy, who had appeared on Kimmel’s show weeks ago and made promises that any health-care bill he supported would have to pass the “Jimmy Kimmel test.” This referred to the headlines Kimmel made months ago after speaking about his infant son’s heart condition and how millions of families wouldn’t have been able to afford the same kind of care unless they were wealthy without the protection of a system like Obamacare. Unfortunately, Senator Cassidy’s new bill that would essentially end Obamacare doesn’t come close to passing the “Jimmy Kimmel test” either, and Kimmel made sure his audience knew it.
Like the monster in the sewers beneath Derry in It, conservative efforts to repeal Obamacare and replace it with any number of massively unpopular health-care plans that will leave millions uninsured keep coming back. Only instead of every 27 years, this seems to happen every five weeks or so. Just when you thought John McCain’s thumbs-down to Mitch McConnell killed the final Obamacare repeal, now comes the Graham-Cassidy bill, named for senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, which is yet another health-care repeal that Congressional Republicans appear to be trying to pass quickly before anyone figures out what it is.
Picking apart Graham-Cassidy as effectively as any Democrat in Congress, Kimmel laid out all the major promises that Cassidy had made about health care — coverage for all, lower premiums, no pre-existing conditions, and no lifetime cap on coverage — followed by the fact that the new bill violates all four of those promises. Kimmel might honestly be America’s best advocate for fighting these health-care rollbacks. He’s passionate, he’s informed, he’s dogged, and he’s not afraid of people who will slam him for “politicizing” something like his son’s health problems. “I am politicizing my son’s health problems,” Kimmel said, “because I have to […] 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.”
Politics and entertainment have been intertwined for decades, though it’s always been a precarious alliance. This week, Senator Cassidy is learning the lesson that the pop-culture hand that feeds you — or at least the pop-culture hand that puts you on TV so you can make promises about your health-care plan leaving no child behind — can also come back to bite you. And when you appear on a show like Kimmel’s and make promises about your health-care plan, then introduce a bill that runs counter to those promises, Kimmel isn’t going to let it go just because you seem like a nice enough guy.
