OPINION:
The left has an uncomfortable habit of slinging around tears to get what it wants.
The latest such show? Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, pleading for Obamacare while speaking for 13 minutes or so about his son’s heart defect.
Let’s just set the record straight: It’s sad Kimmel’s son was born with a heart problem. It’s sad Kimmel faced a panicky situation when he was forced to watch as a steady barrage of doctors and nurses tried to treat his son while he stood helplessly to the side. It’s sad his son, just hours after birth, had to suffer an open-heart surgery — a three-hour ordeal that Kimmel called “terrifying.”
Hearts and prayers to the whole Kimmel family.
But this is where Kimmel loses the support.
“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 pre-existing condition,” Kimmel said, after delivering an emotional roller-coaster retelling of his son’s medical emergency on national television, The Hill reported.
The point he was trying to make?
He cheered Congress for actually increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health by $2 billion, rather than reducing it by $1.2 billion, as President Donald Trump wanted.
“Thank God our congressmen made a deal … to not go along with that,” Kimmel said, of the budget bill.
He then went on — tearfully — to chide Americans into losing the partisanship when it comes to health care.
“Let’s stop with the nonsense,” he said, The Hill reported. “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. No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It just shouldn’t happen. Not here.”
And with that — bam. That’s the favorite political tool of the left — emotion — followed closely by deception. It’s one Barack Obama used frequently to bring his Obamacare to fruition, citing unproven, twisted tales of health care sorrows. It’s one Democrats use frequently to press the likes of gun control, or education funding, or Planned Parenthood funding. Now it’s one Kimmel used to further the idea the country just can’t go back to a time when Obamacare didn’t exist.
The whole line of logic is faulty, though.
Where in America did newborn children not receive the health care they needed?
What hospitals in the country cruelly tossed a child into the street — a newborn child born with a heart defect — and called out, as the door slammed shut, “No health care for you!”
Fact is, Americans received emergency care before Obamacare. Fact is, too, Americans also received treatment from insurers for pre-existing conditions after a certain amount of time had passed.
Maybe they received bills in the mail for the emergency care, and for co-pays and deductibles for other medical services received — but not as large as the bills taxpayers and insurance holders alike are receiving now, post-Obamacare. Pre-Obamacare, the system was more free market; post-Obamacare, it’s a spread-the-wealth, subsidize the poor system.
And for many around the country who’ve been insured through their private sector employers for years, the switch to a government-controlled system has brought sticker shock, and financial hardship.
The same type of hardship Kimmel was trying to say existed before Obamacare took effect.
Kimmel ought to stick with comedy. His son’s story, while worthy of sympathy and compassion, should not be used as a tool for a political campaign. Let’s keep the tear-jerking tales where they belong — behind the Constitution, as a supplement of discussions, but always secondary to the limited government legislative views Founding Fathers had for the country.
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