ABC’s self-described “eating pizza” expert, Jimmy Kimmel was at it again on Tuesday, admittedly politicizing his son’s medical condition to push for socialized medicine. This time he was targeting Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and Senate Republicans with disgusting charges of aiming to do cruel things with the lives and health care of Americans. In all, Kimmel’s description painted the GOP as villains in a straight-to-DVD Hollywood flop.
“And this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel Test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel Test,” he declared, noting that Cassidy wanted his bill to live up to Kimmel’s situation. “This one, your child with a preexisting condition would get the care he needs if and only if his father is Jimmy Kimmel or otherwise you might be screwed.”
During his nearly seven-minute-long tirade, he asserted that the bill would be kicked 30 million people off their insurance along with a host of other terrible things:
Coverage for all: No, in fact, it will kick about 30 million American off of insurance. Preexisting conditions: No. If the bill passes individual states can let insurance companies charge you more if you have a preexisting condition. You’ll find that little loophole later in the document after it says they can’t. They can and they will.
But will it lower premiums? Well, in fact, for lots of people the bill will result in higher premiums. And as for as no lifetime caps go, the states can decide on that too, which means there will be lifetime caps in many states.
“They’re trying to sneak this scam of a bill they cooked up in without an analysis from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office,” he added a short time later.
But that really makes you wonder. If the bill was really being sneaked through, then how does he know what’s in it? And being that the bill is classified as “major legislation” it has to get a CBO score before getting voted on, but since it hasn’t yet, where is Kimmel getting his information? For crying out loud, he admitted that “this is not my area of expertise. My area of expertise is eating pizza and that’s really about it.”
So all of that might indicate that he’s just working off old numbers. But even in the previous CBO reports for past GOP healthcare bills, the office explained that the roughly 30 million without insurance was primarily driven by people CHOOSING not to purchase healthcare.
The CBO noted that most Americans lived in a state where they would continue to receive the benefits he claimed were being taken away for all. And they also found that most Americans would receive a 20 – 30 percent decrease in their premiums, which would make what Kimmel said a lie.
He also stuck up for ObamaCare, smearing the GOP with claims that “even though eight years ago they didn’t want anyone to have healthcare at all.” Well, the facts of that matter were simple. ObamaCare was failing with most people having one expensive insurance option and some none at all. And under ObamaCare people experienced massive premium hikes, over 100 percent in Arizona.
According to Kimmel, the GOP really didn’t want Americans to have good health care period. “They’re counting on you to be so overwhelmed with all the information you just trust them to take care of you, but they’re not taking care of you,” he decried. “They’re taking care of the people who give them money like insurance companies.”
“We can’t let them do this to our children, our senior citizens, and our veterans, or to any of us,” he proclaimed.
In a cry of desperation for socialized medicine, he championed the health care systems of other countries: “It’s unbelievable. Somehow Japan, England, and Canada, and Germany, France, they all figured healthcare out. And don’t say they have terrible healthcare because it’s just not true.”
But the pizza eating expert was 100 percent wrong on what good health care looked like around the world. All one has to do was look at the case of newborn Charlie Gard. Because of healthcare rationing, a British court put him on a long path to death because they didn’t want to waste their resources on him or allow the family to take him to America for treatment.
We're still waiting to see if Kimmel agrees with that aspect of socialized medicine if that were his son.
Transcript below:
ABC
Jimmy Kimmel Live
September 19, 2017
11:50:21 PM EasternJIMMY KIMMEL: I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe, but a few months ago after my son had open heart surgery, which was something I spoke about on the air, a politician, a senator named Bill Cassidy from Louisiana was on my show and he wasn’t very honest. It seemed like he was being honest. He got a lot f credit and attention for coming off like a regular reasonable voice in the Republican Party when it came to health care for coming up with something—I didn’t name it this, he named it this—the Jimmy Kimmel Test. Which was, in a nutshell, no family should be denied medical care emergency or otherwise because they can’t afford it.
He agreed to that. He said he would only support a health care bill that made sure a child like mine would get the health coverage he needs no matter how much money his parents make. And that did not have annual or life time caps. These insurance companies, they want caps to limit how much they can pay out. So, for instance, if your son has to have three open heart surgeries it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. If he hits his life time cap of let’s say a million dollars, the rest of his life he’s on his own.
Now, our current plan protects Americans from these caps and prevents insurance providers from jacking up the rates for people who have preexisting conditions of all types. And Senator Cassidy said his plan would do that too. He said all this on television many times.
(…)
So last week, Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham proposed a new bill, the Graham/Cassidy bill. And this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel Test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel Test. This one, your child with a preexisting condition would get the care he needs if and only if his father is Jimmy Kimmel or otherwise you might be screwed.
Now, I don’t know what happened to Bill Cassidy, but when he was on this publicity tour he listed his demands for a health care bill very clearly. This were his words: He said he wants coverage for all, no discrimination based on preexisting conditions, lower premiums for middle-class families, and no life time caps. And guess what. The new bill does none of those things.
Coverage for all: No, in fact it will kick about 30 million American off of insurance. Preexisting conditions: No. If the bill passes individual states can let insurance companies charge you more if you have a preexisting condition. You’ll find that little loophole later in the document after it says they can’t. They can and they will.
But will it lower premiums? Well, in fact, for lots of people the bill will result in higher premiums. And as for as no life time caps go, the states can decide on that too, which means there will be life time caps in many states.
So, not only did Bill Cassidy fail the Jimmy Kimmel Test, he failed the Bill Cassidy Test. He failed his own test. And you don’t see that happen very much. This bill he came up with is actually worse than the one that-- Thank God Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and john McCain torpedoed over the summer. And I hope they have the courage and the good sense to do that again with this one, because these other guys who claim they want Americans to have better healthcare—even though eight years ago they didn’t want anyone to have health care at all—They’re trying to sneak this scam of a bill they cooked up in without an analysis from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.
They don’t even want you to see it. They’re having one hearing—I read the hearing is being held in the Homeland Security Committee, which has nothing to do with healthcare.
(…)
And that’s what these guys are relying on. They’re counting on you to be so over whelmed with all the information you just trust them to take care of you, but they’re not taking care of you. They’re taking care of the people who give them money like insurance companies.
(…)
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, our senior citizens, and our veterans, or to any of us.
And by the way, before you post a nasty Facebook message saying I’m politicizing my son’s health problems, I want to let you know, I’m politicizing my son’s health problems because I have too.
(…)
It’s unbelievable. Somehow Japan, England, and Canada, and Germany, France, they all figured healthcare out. And don’t say they have terrible health care because it’s just not true. This is a bad bill.
(…)
