Here's Jonathan Cohn with the devastating impact of what would happen if and when Romney repeals Obamacare -- specifically what would happen to Romney's beloved emergency rooms:
Remember, Romney doesn’t simply want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, effectively taking health insurance away from 30 million people who, starting in 2014, are likely to get it from the law. He also wants to end Medicaid, making cuts that would leave between 14 and 27 million additional people without insurance. And he wants to change the tax treatment of employer health benefits, in ways that could make coverage more expensive or harder to get.
Romney’s strategy for health care isn’t “repeal and replace,” as he sometimes likes to say. It’s “repeal and reverse,” as my colleague Ed Kilgore has called it. And it'd leave the ERs even more inundated than they are now.
But the ERs will still be there, right? I mean, if you're injured or sick, you could totally just go to one and wait. Then, if you haven't waited too long and you happen to be treated, then you can go broke trying to pay for it. If you can't pay for it, you can file for bankruptcy like thousands of other people with insurmountably large medical bills. After all, hospitals can just jack up rates and pass the losses along to other sick people. Free market! Yeehaw!