Jimmy Kimmel on Sen. Cassidy's health-care vow: He 'just lied right to my face'

Jimmy Kimmel shared a very personal story with viewers earlier this year about how when his son, Billy, was born, doctors discovered he had a condition that required emergency open-heart surgery. Billy is doing great now, but the experience left an emotional Kimmel wondering how in the United States, whether you live or die could hinge on how much money you have.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) later appeared on Kimmel's show, and told him he was going to enact the "Jimmy Kimmel Test," meaning families with kids like Billy shouldn't be denied health care and there shouldn't be any limits to how much insurance companies pay. "He got a lot of credit and attention for coming off like a rare, reasonable voice in the Republican Party when it came to health care," Kimmel said on Tuesday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live. But now Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have made up their own health-care bill, which completely fails the Jimmy Kimmel Test — about 30 million people would lose coverage, states would decide if insurance companies can charge people more for pre-existing conditions and if they could enact lifetime caps, and many people would have higher premiums, Kimmel said.

The hypocrisy was not lost on the host (who tweeted before the show a picture showing a very happy Billy helping him write the monologue). He shared clips of Cassidy's publicity tour touting the Jimmy Kimmel Test, and he said he doesn't appreciate the fact that Cassidy "just lied right to my face." Kimmel ordered Cassidy to stop using his name, and to stop by the studio anytime to take the new Jimmy Kimmel Test — "it's called a lie detector test." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.