What prompted the Colliers to attend a Congressional district meeting for the first time was an almost solemn sense of the magnitude of the health care issue, and its place in determining the scope of American government.

“We both think this is the most important thing we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes,” Mr. Collier said the next day in an interview at his family’s four-bedroom house, overlooking a fishing pond. “I mean, the Vietnam War, which was a big deal in my early formative years, pales in comparison to the way this thing could turn our country.”

“I know we need some reform,” he said, in a deliberative drawl. “I’ve just got questions about how we’re going to do it.”

Ms. Collier, 60, an interior designer, said she had wanted Mr. Bishop, a soft-spoken centrist Democrat who has yet to take a formal position on the legislation, to understand that there were deep concerns.

Image Susan Collier wanted Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr. to know there were concerns about the health care overhaul. Credit... Kate Medley for The New York Times

“I wanted to make sure we were represented,” she said.

The Colliers are committed conservatives who have voted Republican in presidential elections since 1980. They receive much of their information from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh’s radio program and Matt Drudge’s Web site. But they said their direct experience with the health care system had persuaded them of the need for change.

When Ms. Collier’s breast cancer was diagnosed three years ago, Mr. Collier’s employer-provided insurance paid for her office visits, a biopsy and three surgeries. But the insurer covered only a small fraction of her radiation treatments, which it considered experimental, leaving the Colliers with a $63,000 bill. To their great relief, the charge was later written off by Emory Healthcare, whose doctors had recommended the regimen.