Alex Abad-Santos at Vox, recounting Monday’s episode:
Kimmel told a heart-wrenching story about his newborn son, who was born a little over a week ago with a congenital heart disease that could have killed him. Kimmel’s wife Molly McNearney (who’s the co-head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live) gave birth to William “Billy” John Kimmel on April 21. Everything seemed fine at first, but a nurse heard a murmur in his heart and noticed that he didn’t look right.
I’ve embedded the video below. You won’t be able to make it through without tearing up.
At the end of it, Kimmel made a passionate argument about the state of healthcare legistlation in America:
We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world. Until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all. You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a preexisting condition.
[…]
If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s something that whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It just shouldn’t happen. Not here.