Obamacare is 'like a microwaved meal' — and 7 other inventive analogies

During the prolonged Obamacare debate, commentators didn't hesitate to liven up dry analysis with creative analogies for the bill. Here, 8 of the more notable comparisons proposed by pundits, bloggers, and politicians:

Health-care reform is like...

The Billy Idol song, "We've been Dancing with Ourselves"

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[Democrat hold-outs in the Senate] have to find the courage of their convictions or we have to find it for them. For months now, it's been like that Billy Idol song...now, let's just get on with it."

—Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) on MSNBC (October 15, 2009)

Microwaved leftovers

"[This bill is like] leftovers that [the Democrats] popped into the microwave, pulled out, given some sprinkles of salt and pepper, tossed a few Republican bread crumbs across the top, and now put it in front of the American public and said, 'Ooh, isn't this good? Don't you like this this time?'"

—Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), on a March 3 episode of Fox and Friends (March 3, 2010)

A horror movie

"This health care bill is like the zombie bill. It's a bill that will never die. You can't kill it."

—David McKalip, a St. Petersburg neurosurgeon (March 11, 2010)

A Japanese bombing

"[Reform] is like Pearl Harbor. It will wake people up and they will go, 'wait, wait, wait, what did they just do?'"—FOX commentator Glenn Beck (March 18, 2010)

Ancient myth

"Health care reform is like a bad Norse saga...excruciatingly endless, filled with the names of people we're not familiar with, and ultimately doomed to tragedy."

—American Thinker's Rick Moran (March 20, 2010)

A well-meaning bandage

"This bill is like a big, giant Band-Aid, but there's still a gash beneath it."

—Jeremy Ellenbogen, CEO of Seven21 Media Center in Kingston, NY (March 21, 2010)

Sexual assault

"Applauding this health-care bill is like applauding a mugging or rape. Do you feel sodomized?"

—Villa Park City (CA) Councilwoman Deborah Pauly on her Facebook page, as reported by the Orange County Register (March 22, 2010)

A very inadequate Rx

"[This bill is like] an aspirin tablet for cancer...It just further strengthens the private insurance companies ... in the form of subsidies and doesn’t do much of anything to rein them in."

—David Himmelstein, member of Physicians for a National Health Program, as reported on Masslive.com (March 22, 2010)