Thank you Jimmy Kimmel for slamming the GOP's new health care bill

Kimmel slams GOP senator for lying "right to my face" over health care.
 By 
Keith Wagstaff
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Once again, Jimmy Kimmel is slamming Republican lawmakers over healthcare.

This time he's attacking the Graham-Cassidy bill, proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy. Cassidy actually appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in May after the talk show host's emotional speech about his son's heart surgery.

The senator promised that he'd only support a bill that passed the "Jimmy Kimmel test" -- meaning that it would guarantee coverage for kids like Kimmel's son, born with congenital heart disease.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel said Cassidy "lied right to my face."

"This bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel test -- but a different Jimmy Kimmel test," he said. "With this one, your child with a preexisting condition will get the care he needs if and only if his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed."

Then he absolutely laid into Graham and Cassidy.

"They're counting on you to be so overwhelmed with all the information, you just trust them to take care of you," he said. "But they're not taking care of you. They're taking care of the people who are giving them money, like insurance companies."

"This guy, Bill Cassidy, lied right to my face"

There's a reason Kimmel is so mad. The new Senate bill allows insurance companies to once again raise rates for people with pre-existing conditions, or even deny them coverage. It would also eliminate Obamacare subsidies and federal funding for Medicaid expansion.

It's hard to tell how many people would lose their insurance thanks to this bill, because the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office hasn't scored it yet -- and won't do so until after the Senate the votes on it.

Kimmel might poke fun at politicians, but he isn't known as a liberal firebrand. For the most part, he leaves that to Stephen Colbert. But he's gone through the gut-wrenching experience of waiting out his baby son's heart surgery.

So many Americans -- myself included -- have watched friends and family members deal with cancer, heart disease, and other life-threatening conditions.

Imagining them being denied care or going bankrupt on top of having of that seems beyond cruel. And that's why it's so important that even people who don't seem "political" speak out.

"Before you post a nasty Facebook post saying I'm politicizing my son's health problems, I want you to know -- I am politicizing my son's health problems, because I have to," he said.

Hopefully, Republican senators were listening.

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Keith Wagstaff

Keith Wagstaff is an assistant editor at Mashable and a terrible Settlers of Catan player. He has written for TIME, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, NBC News, The Village Voice, VICE, GQ and New York Magazine, among many other reputable and not-so-reputable publications. After nearly a decade in New York City, he now lives in his native Los Angeles.

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