One Surprising Voice is Changing the Entire Health Care Debate

There is an important voice echoing in lawmakers’ minds this morning, as Republicans scrounge for the votes they need to pass their Obamacare overhaul. The voice is not President Trump’s or House Speaker Paul Ryan’s, it’s not coming from doctors or researchers or health care advocacy organizations.

The voice belongs to Jimmy Kimmel, and it’s changing the political landscape in Washington.

On Monday night, Kimmel opened his late night TV show with this thirteen minute, harrowing story of the discovery of his newborn son’s heart defect and subsequent open-heart surgery. It is the nightmare of any new parent, and such a relief to hear that the baby boy is home and well.

But it’s really the last few minutes of Kimmel’s monologue that are having an enormous impact in Washington: he chided President Trump for proposing billions in cuts to research at the National Institutes of Health, he praised Congress for actually increasing the NIH budget. And then Kimmel made this passionate statement about the millions of people who now have health coverage since the enactment of Obamacare:

"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? I mean, we do.

Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whoever you support, we need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, the people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly. Let’s stop with the nonsense. 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."

The video of Kimmel’s story was watched more than seven million times in one day. It is one of those exceedingly rare moments in Washington when a non-partisan, apolitical statement clarifies and unifies Americans engaging in a huge political debate. Kimmel’s words have changed the calculation for Republican lawmakers, as they decide whether to vote for their party’s health care bill. His story has changed the way Democrats approach their fight to maintain research funding and other federal social programs.

In fact, with that one, thirteen minute story, Kimmel may have made a greater impact on the government than any of the many thousands of minutes of political speeches that fill the air in Washington. Kimmel’s is the one echoing through the halls of The Capitol.

-- Andrea Seabrook