Cities scramble to prepare for onslaught of the healthy.
ITH THE Supreme Court's 5-to-4 ruling in favor of President Obama's health-care legislation, many are warning of the horrors to unfold in the United States over the next few years as the law is fully implemented.
City officials across the country are bracing for what one Virginia civic leader called "the sheer onslaught of healthy people wandering our streets like zombies, except they'll be alive and fully screened for major diseases. But otherwise, they'll be just like zombies."
Store owners in malls are already meeting to sort out the mayhem that is sure to unfold, as healthy people take to the streets in vast numbers and, as one shop owner put it, "storm into otherwise peaceful shopping centers and demand goods and services like there's no tomorrow, which there might not be if we don't put a stop to this right now!!"
National leaders have picked up on constituents' fears and are already releasing statements of support.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), crying freely at the podium during a hastily called press conference, vowed "as long as there is breath in my body, I will stand united with Americans against thirty million other Americans getting unprecedented access to the kind of health care I've had since joining the House! It's an outrage, I tell you!!" cried the clearly distraught Boehner.
Meanwhile, many average Americans are expressing deep concerns over their children's future in a changing America, knowing, as one father said, "the days of charity car washes and spaghetti dinners may be over, since we won't need to help friends and family with mounting medical costs. It makes me sick just thinking about it, but not sick from a pre-existing condition," said the parent of two. "God is protecting me from one of those."
A mother from Poughkeepsie, New York, spoke for many when she said, "I have a three-year-old daughter to take care of. What if I get sick? Then I'll have to explain to my little girl why Mommy got treatment that didn't cost anything even though I'm unemployed. How could President Obama do this to us??" she asked, throwing up her hands in despair.
Although in stiff disagreement with the Supreme Court's decision, many cities have nonetheless begun training their police forces to deal with an inevitably healthier American population.
"We might as well get used to it," said one Midwestern policeman, "because the healthy people are coming, ready or not."
© 6.29.12 Kate Heidel
