A week after his son underwent his second heart surgery, TV show host Jimmy Kimmel brought him on his eponymous late night talk show. He called on Congress to fund the Children's Health Insurance Programme.
Kimmel had gone on a week's break to spend time with his family as his seven-month-old son Billy recovers from a successful heart surgery performed last week. He got back to the show on Monday, reports hollywoodreporter.com.
Billy was born with congenital heart disease.
Kimmel said: "But look, he's fine everybody, he may have p**ped, but he's fine."
Thanking his guest hosts who took over the show last week -- Chris Pratt, Tracee Ellis Ross, Neil Patrick Harris and Melissa McCarthy -- a visibly emotional Kimmel joked: "Daddy cries on TV but Billy doesn't. It's unbelievable."
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He then thanked the doctors and nurses at Children's Hospital here who "treated Billy -- and not just Billy, (but) many kids, with so much caring and compassion -- children from every income level, whose health is especially threatened right now because of something you probably never heard of. It's called CHIP".
According to hollywoodreporter.com, Kimmel explained that CHIP, or the Children's Health Insurance Programme, covers about nine million American kids "whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but don't have access to affordable coverage through their jobs, which means it almost certainly covers children you know".
"This programme is literally life and death for American kids, and has always had bipartisan support. But this year, Congress let the money for it expire while they work on getting tax cuts for their millionaire and billionaire donors," he said.
He ended the monologue with a personal plea for people to call their representatives in Congress to urge them to fund CHIP.
"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" is aired in India on Star World and Star World HD.
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