Jimmy Kimmel Delivers Emotional Plea To Save Obamacare After His Son Nearly Dies

Jimmy Kimmel comes on the air each and every night to help America find laughter in even the most difficult situations. But on Monday, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host took time out of his show to share a deeply personal story and a plea with the U.S. government: Please save Obamacare.

Kimmel shared in his opening monologue that his wife had given birth to their second child, a son named Billy, one week ago. The joyous event soon took a turn after a nurse discovered Billy had a dangerous heart defect and needed emergency surgery.

“We had atheists praying for us, ok?” Kimmel joked. “And I hate to say it—even that son of a [expletive] Matt Damon sent flowers.”

Luckily, the story comes with a happy ending, and Billy is already home with his parents and his loving big sister. But what Kimmel wanted to stress more than anything in his monologue is that parents have to worry about affording the care needed to save their child’s life.

“President Trump last month proposed a $6 billion cut to funding to the National Institute of Health. And thank God our congressmen made a deal last night to not go along with that,” Kimmel noted, adding that more than 40 percent of those affected would be children, and that just a few years ago, millions of Americans went without health care.

“If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make,” Kimmel said. “I think that’s something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? … This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the team—it’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”

Currently, The White House and congressional Republicans are shopping around their latest health care bill, which would repeal and replace Obamacare. "I want it to be good for sick people. It's not in its final form right now," Trump told Bloomberg News. "It will be every bit as good on preexisting conditions as Obamacare." However, as CNN reported, they do not have enough votes to pass the measure and no vote has been scheduled.