Here’s what I see happening:
The Republicans, through their unending obstructionism and fear-mongering, manage to kill the health care bill and win enough seats in mid term elections to ensure it never gets discussed again.
A hypothetical Republican-leaning SDMB poster rejoices, as the Republican values that truly represent the USA have been saved! The USA is free from the tyranny of having a healthy population! And now all those dirty brown people who are such a strain on the system can die in obscurity and the riches of the nation can stay where they belong- in the pockets of the rich.
But then, disaster strikes. The poster gets a rare, exotic, painful and untreatable case of ass cancer. He thinks to himself that this sucks but since he has good health care coverage and since he’s a patriotic Republican he should get world class treatment at the earliest opportunity. So he goes to his health care provider to bask in the benefits of free market efficiency.
The insurance company takes one look at the cost of treatment and decides that no matter what this man does with the rest of his short lifespan, he will never pay back in premiums what he will take out in a single visit to the oncologist. Their reply to his claim is swift and certain: DENIED.
The poster then faces a painful period of weeks to months before his guts fall right out of his ass. And with no job (because the pain medication that he can afford leaves him legally intoxicated and he is fired for that or for shitting blood all over the seats) he can’t afford any kind of treatment. Well, time for the good old American solution: he is going to sue.
He sues his doctor for not diagnosing the ass cancer in time. But the Republicans have pushed through a strict tort reform that makes it all but impossible to sue unless your doctor operated on you with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. So lawsuit #1 is laughed out of court and he now owes his lawyer a bunch of money.
Time for lawsuit #2, against the insurance company. This one is laughed out of court immediately, again due to protections brought in by the Republican congress and senate. He now owes his lawyer twice as much money and doesn’t have the option of suing anyone else because his lawyer is not willing to take a third tilt at the windmill.
So at this point our patriotic Republican is out of money, is denied coverage and cannot sue anyone. This is where he proves himself a real patriot and exercises his Second Amendment rights. He takes one or two of his many legal firearms, goes into a Democrat’s office and shoots everyone there because the health care situation is all their fault. Having unburdened the health care system of the needs of several people, he then takes his own life with a smile on his face.
Fox News picks up the story of the poor patriot who slipped through the cracks and the battered Obama administration is booted out on its sorry ass in 2012 because of the Democratic incompetence that allowed such a tragedy to occur.
Slope a little slippery for you? Well, people who don’t believe in health care reform really piss me off. Understand this: THE INSURANCE COMPANIES DON’T OWE YOU A THING. No matter how good your plan is, some insurance company bureaucrat has one single purpose and that is to deny your claims. Take any random insurance company nightmare story. Now put yourself in the shoes of the person who died penniless and in pain. If the Republicans manage to take down these reforms, that person will be you. And it’s not a matter of if but rather when.