The 217 Republicans who voted for a healthcare repeal bill are now about to feel a new level of hometown voter outrage during this congressional recess, and ultimately at the ballot box.

Voters are mobilizing in congressional districts throughout the country in the coming days. Events they organize will elevate the voices of small-town families to show that GOP proposals on healthcare, the budget and taxes would devastate families, communities and the healthcare infrastructure deep in their districts. They will also be raising the call for Medicare for all and for negotiating lower prices with drug corporations.

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Those Republicans should have listened to Ed Weberman and ReShonda Young.

They were two of the people who shared their healthcare stories during the “Hometown Rising” town hall sponsored by People’s Action on April 25 in Washington. That was nine days before House Republicans, pressured by President Trump to score a political “win,” voted to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — no matter who got hurt in the process.

If Republicans had listened to Weberman, Young and the other people whose healthcare stories were at once heartrending and inspiring, they would have feared more the millions of voters who now realize their lives are on the line than the well-heeled tweeter-in-chief.

Weberman is from White Lake, Mich., and is represented by Republican Rep. Dave Trott. He has a son in his 20s who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“The ACA saved his life,” Weberman said at the town hall. That realization drove his entire family to the front line of protests against Trott at town halls that drew national attention.

Trott apparently didn’t get the message; he was a “yes” vote Thursday on healthcare repeal.

He apparently didn’t hear when Weberman described the high-risk pool provision that was supposed to salve concerns about covering people like his son as “cruel, awful and unacceptable.”

But Trott and his Republican colleagues will hear the reverberations of Weberman’s concluding message: “I am committed to fight. I will do anything to protect my son, my family and all of you. Healthcare is a human right."

ReShonda Young, a small-business owner from Waterloo, Iowa, also spoke at the Hometown Rising event. She campaigned for passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and called the signing of that bill on her birthday “the best gift I could have received.” It meant that her employees, including her part-time workers, had a way to get affordable health insurance.

She told the story of one of those employees, who initially resented the Affordable Care Act mandate that required people without employer-provided insurance to either purchase an individual plan through the healthcare marketplace or pay a fine. But then the employee developed Bell's palsy, a debilitating stroke-like condition.

“If it were not for her having to be mandated to have coverage and enrolling on Healthcare.gov, she would not have been on the Medicaid expansion and she likely would have ended up in bankruptcy court," Young said.

Waterloo is in Ohio’s first congressional district, represented by Republican Rod Blum, who also voted for the latest healthcare repeal bill.

"I have many friends who are committed Republicans, and they are just as afraid as we are,” Young said, “People who you wouldn't normally see outside of their congressional offices are out there with signs now making their voices heard."

The sharpest edge of the resistance against Trump administration and Republican healthcare policies is not in the large cities where progressive opposition is expected and discounted. It is in places like White Lake, Mich. and Waterloo, Iowa, places represented by Republicans who for too long have voted based on an ideological template handed to them by corporations and right-wing think tanks rather than the real concerns of their voters.

In one respect the GOP has given us a gift. By giving us a graphic depiction of their vision of profit-centered care — one that cuts at least 24 million people out of health insurance, allows price gouging of older and sicker Americans and rations healthcare for the poor — our vision of healthcare for all has become even more compelling. That won’t be lost on many of the challengers to Republican candidates in 2018.

LeeAnn Hall is co-director of People’s Action. Hall serves on the executive committee of healthcare for America Now (HCAN). She is a national leader in organizing communities throughout the country on healthcare issues.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.