Jimmy Kimmel to Republican Senator: Keep My Name Out of Your Mouth

Back in May, Jimmy Kimmel delivered an emotional monologue on his infant son's surgery. It was a passionate and intimate plea for a compassionate health-care system, not because it would help Kimmel or his family—he stressed that their insurance covered everything—but for families who could go bankrupt or hit lifetime insurance caps for the same procedure.

That monologue got so much attention and goodwill that Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy glommed on it and coined what he called the "Kimmel Test": health-care bill with coverage for all, no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, lower premiums for middle-class families, and no lifetime caps. That sounds admirable as hell. But now there's a new Obamacare repeal bill worming its way through the Senate right now, and it doesn't pass the "Kimmel Test." And Cassidy isn't just on board with it—he and Lindsey Graham wrote it.

And Kimmel is pissed. In his opening monologue on Tuesday, he laid into the senator's new bill:

Coverage for all? No. In fact, it'll kick about 30 million Americans off insurance. Pre-existing conditions? Nope. If the bill passes, individual states can let insurance companies charge you more if you have pre-existing conditions. You'll find that little loophole later in the document after it says they can't. They can and they will.

Kimmel went on to note that states will also get to decide on lifetime caps and that premiums will go up for most people. Cassidy's bill fails the standards Cassidy himself set. And if you're thinking health care is too much for a late-night comedian to wade into, well, Jimmy Kimmel is right there with you:

I never imagined I would get involved in something like this; 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 and 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 you to know I am politicizing my son's health problems. Because I have to. My family has health insurance. We don't have to worry about this, but other people do. 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.

There's no evidence to show that Cassidy ever planned to follow through on his gestures to look like a compassionate person. After all, he voted for the train wreck repeal effort that failed dramatically back in July. It's entirely possible he saw public sympathy, wanted to milk it, and found a cheap ploy to seem shallowly sympathetic. Still, Kimmel called on Cassidy—who is a real-life medical doctor—to try to improve the country's health care instead of hamstringing it.

And if not, stop using my name, okay? Because I don't want my name on it. There's a new Jimmy Kimmel Test for you. It's called a lie-detector test. You're welcome to stop by the studio and take it anytime.