Amidst the liberal media’s undying support for Jimmy Kimmel’s emotion-driven push to socialize health care, conservative icon and podcast host Ben Shapiro demolished Kimmel’s fact-free, liberal claims on his Wednesday show.
“Because of the merge of entertainment and politics, we’ve basically said that those hearts are the fullest, we’re just going to grant that their brains are also fullest. I don’t think that that’s necessarily true,” Shapiro argued at one point in the 20-minute-plus takedown.
Shapiro brought up the fact that, like Kimmel’s son, his daughter needed heart surgery so she was treated by the same doctor (Vaughn Starnes) at the same hospital (Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles). He also noted that this hospital is a charity hospital with a massive endowment, so children that Kimmel claims have been denied care actually do receive it.
That being said, Shapiro explained “exploit that to talk about insurance because I don’t think that personal narrative is nearly as important as making good public policy decisions.”
Near the end of the Kimmel block, he concluded, in part:
I’m tired of this notion that — like he gets cheered, ‘I’m politicizing my kid’s story because there’s so many others who can’t.’ Well, how about the people who talk actually read the bills. How about the people who talk actually like actually study this stuff. It’s so funny. You hear about the left, they say, on global warming, listen to the experts. Listen to the science. Listen to experts and then when it comes to stuff like this, they say screw that. Let’s listen to the guy who’s kid had a health problem, okay? It doesn’t quite work that way. It doesn’t quite work that way.
With that in mind, Shapiro actually stuck to the facts, starting with the reality that insurance costs “skyrocket because you can’t cover somebody’s conditions without someone having to pay more money for it.”
He also brought up government-run health care like Medicaid being a problem since reimbursement rates for doctors are much lower than private insurance, so Bernie Sanders’s proposal of Medicaid for All would worsen the health care system.
Before playing the first of several parts from Kimmel’s Tuesday monologue, Shapiro summarized the “Jimmy Kimmel test” as meaning that “everybody needs to be covered all the time for everything.” Thus, Kimmel foolishly believed that it’s government’s job to do fulfill the test or is in the best position to be able to do everything for everyone.
“The idea that it’s government’s job to do this or that it lowers health care costs in general by doing and makes it more available, it’s just not true. In fact, many patients at CHLA who are getting these sorts of surgeries don’t have Medicaid at all. A lot of them are illegal immigrants. Again, I know this because my wife has worked at CHLA. So, you know, this is my problem,” emphasized Shapiro.
Going more broadly, the conservative author observed that society has largely decided that, if someone goes through a traumatic event, they become an expert on the corresponding issue:
I think that we have fallen into the trap of suggesting that because we have sympathy for somebody’s personal situation, we’ve grant[ed] credence to a logic that doesn’t really work, okay? I’m not an expert on health care or whatever expertise I have on health care does not arise because my daughter had a heart surgery, okay? It arises because of the fact that I’ve actually studied the issues. It’s because my wife works as a doctor in this system and knows the system intimately, okay? That’s where I get whatever expertise I have. The notion that we have in our society is so stupid now that if you are the victim of something, that makes you an expert on that issue, right? If you’re a victim of terror, now you’re a terrorism expert. That’s not the way that it works.....But because of the merge of entertainment and politics, we’ve basically said that those hearts are the fullest, we’re just going to grant that their brains are also fullest. I don’t think that that’s necessarily true.
Following the first Kimmel clip, Shapiro came out firing, noting that even ObamaCare doesn’t satisfy the Kimmel test. As Kimmel would try to claim later that every other civilized country has figured out health care, Shapiro noted the problems with countries like Canada and France:
In fact, it’s not fulfilled by any system. This is no system on planet Earth that fulfills the notion that you get care for anything that you need at any time, regardless of cost, this system does not exist. It doesn’t exist in France where they have rationing and it has serious debt problems. It doesn’t exist in Japan, where they’re increasingly facing rationing and serious debt problems. It doesn’t exist in Canada. It doesn’t exist in the U.K.. It doesn’t exist anywhere. The system where it does exist the best, places like Switzerland, are places where they mandate you spend a significant percentage of your income from the time you are very young on health insurance and you buy it, right? The government picks up the slack, but you buy it in the initial instance.
“So, what he’s talking about, this test, it doesn’t really work in real life because there is no such thing as a system that takes care of everybody for free,” he added.
After the second clip, Shapiro blasted Kimmel for his “slogan-eering” because that and facts “are not quite the same.” Kimmel claimed the Republican plans want to level lifetime care caps on individuals, but Shapiro was ready:
You know, look, the insurance companies, ‘they want to put lifetime care caps.’ These are options, okay? You can buy an insurance program with no lifetime cap. In fact, a huge number of people throughout the United States who have employer-based health insurance or your employer buys your health insurance, which is like 90 percent of people who have health insurance, have employer-based health insurance, those people — the vast majority of them — probably don’t even have a lifetime cap. The vast majority of them probably have no cap because they’re buying group insurance negotiated by your employer.
Similarly, Shapiro astutely pointed out the Kimmel doesn’t realize how both he and most of the American people haven’t had to experience the insanity of the ObamaCare plans (and thus not “left out in the cold”) because they have employer-based care.
He also took a few moments to excoriate the ABC late-night host’s use of emotions, declaring that “[i]t really is a maddening thing to me that so many people in American political discourse are interested in playing this game where sympathy overrides logic.”
Following the fourth and fifth clips, Shapiro explained that the leftist-loved ObamaCare hasn’t created universality with millions opting out of it due to the burdensome plans. He also noted that, should the Graham-Cassidy plan go forward, states would still have plenty of sway in whether they stay in the ObamaCare system.
It was here that Shapiro was arguably at his best [emphasis mine]
And when he talks about affordability, this has been the big problem with ObamaCare. It’s driven up the costs of insurance, so ObamaCare doesn’t fulfill any of these pre-conditions either, but the idea that more market options is a problem, it’s because Jimmy Kimmel has a very simplistic view of what health insurance is supposed to be. The government is supposed to cover everything and all the problems are supposed to go away. That doesn’t exist anywhere on Earth, anywhere in history nor will it exist anywhere in the future. That’s not how health care works, okay? That’s not how health care works. As I’ve said many times, there are three elements to health care: Universality, everyone has it. Affordability, it’s very affordable. Quality, the quality is very good. You can have two of these three. You cannot have all three. Most government systems have universality and affordability to the individual, but affordability to the country and the quality kinda sucks because they have to ration.
Responding to Kimmel’s attack on insurance companies as nefarious businesses, Shapiro argued that “[i]nsurance companies donated tens of millions of dollars to Obama’s campaign in 2008 and 2012” and, in response, “have been getting huge bailouts from the federal government on a regular basis under ObamaCare.”
“Finally, Jimmy Kimmel ends up reading the phone number of Bill Cassidy and urging people to call it. Again, this is a late-night TV, right? I mean, this is a political diatribe in the middle of late-night TV. Jimmy Kimmel can do what he wants, right? I mean, that’s his prerogative. But, in the end, what he ends up saying is that he — he acknowledges that he’s exploiting his son’s situation in order to push a certain political viewpoint and then he justifies that by saying it has to be done,” Shapiro stated.
Moments after the final clip, Shapiro responded to Kimmel’s message to critics that they can take their concerns and shove it up their rear ends:
And when he says take your politization accusations and shove them up your butt, again, I’ve talked about health care for years on this program. How many times have I suggested that I get my authority for discussing that on the basis of my daughter having an open heart surgery from the same doctor at the same hospital as Jimmy Kimmel. How many times? The answer is zero. The only time I’ve ever mentioned that on the program is with regard to Jimmy Kimmel invoking it and me saying, listen, you can’t invoke your kid’s health problem in order to paint a particular picture on health care because that just doesn’t hold and I do think it’s kind of egregious.
