Jimmy Kimmel emotionally gives a personal example of why it is so important that health insurance companies not be allowed to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Kimmel recently had a baby son, who was born with a heart defect. As Kimmel points out, before the ACA went into effect, his son would likely have been denied coverage for that “pre-existing condition”.
Now, Kimmel likely has enough money that he could save his baby, but a middle-class person would be put in the position of having to decide if they could afford to save their baby’s life, and a poor person would have to watch while their newborn needlessly died.
In the following video, listen to Kimmel’s story. When he starts thanking people you can skip ahead to 10:20 to hear about the political side of this story, namely the heartlessness of Donald Trump who wanted to cut the funding to the medical institutions who saved his son’s life.
As many people point out, conservative Republicans seem to have forgotten that the whole purpose of insurance is to spread risk. Instead, they want to punish people who get sick or injured because it is somehow their fault because they don’t “lead good lives“. They have it completely backwards.
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Yeah, as I mentioned before, I like the way Brooks weasels his way around the pre-existing conditions issue Tapper confronts him about. He seems to make a roundabout concession to PECs for situations like Kimmel’s but neglects to note that, unless it’s a Federal mandate, leaving it optional for states like his (Alabama and others Bronze Age locales) make it more likely to leave their residents uninsured because, you know, profits over people.
That’s one thing that continues to baffle me about Republican logic, here and elsewhere. One the one hand, they preach about the virtues of competition, including insurance companies having to compete across state lines. On the other hand, they glorify “states rights” and the “freedom” to operate without federal mandates crimping their style to do the things they think best for their state, regardless of the consequences to people’s lives.
I guess when your premise is always that the federal government is the enemy of the people, the conclusions are always foregone. Such is the legacy of St. Ronald, to which the Republican Party shall forever be tethered.
So called pro-life, until they aren’t.
I find Brooks’s comments are really important beyond the scope of just health care. The crux of the argument is this: “people with pre-existing conditions, they have those conditions through no fault of their own. And I think our society, under those circumstances, needs to help. [emph. added]”
It seems to me that there is a fundamental premise that underlies all major GOP policy positions: Help unfortunate people who can prove they deserve it while denying help for those who can’t. Need health care? Prove you live a healthy lifestyle. Need SNAP or TANF benefits? Prove you don’t take drugs. Need an abortion? Prove you weren’t irresponsible or promiscuous. Need to stay in the country where you’ve lived your whole life? Prove that your parents brought you here legally when you were an infant. Need to avoid being arrested for failing to use your turn signal? Prove you are innocent of every other possible infraction by not smoking or showing any sign of being nervous. Need to vote? Prove your citizenship by spending time and money gathering requisite credentials, regardless of moral or practical objections.
In all those cases, if you can’t provide the required proof, tough luck. Maybe you are a citizen, but the closest place to get government ID is 200 miles away and only open for 2 hours a week. Maybe you don’t take drugs, but you can’t afford to pay in advance for the test to prove it. Maybe you were smoking to calm your nerves during that traffic stop because you have mild PTSD.
And maybe, just maybe, we’re not all perfect and live perfect lives. However, GOP policies provide no lenience for that.
“Conservative” is a misnomer. For any policy decision, they always favor the more destructive option.
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[…] This blog recently posted about Jimmy Kimmel and the near-death of his newborn son. Kimmel made the point that nobody should be put in the position of having to decide if they can afford to save their child, and scolds Trump and the Republicans for being heartless. […]