It’s a goat on a bridge eating a flaming rug pulled from a collapsing sand castle! Yes, of course, I’m talking about the Affordable Care Act, which you may also know as Obamacare.

Killing the health insurance law is a top priority of Republicans in the White House and Congress. As they try to achieve that, it has brought out some lively and figurative language. Many imagine the health law as a pioneer homestead. Others as a marauding farm animal. Still others direct their rhetoric to its complexity. Just this week, Kevin Brady, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, described the G.O.P. challenge as akin to a Rubik’s Cube.

These metaphors can be clarifying or confusing, an occupational hazard of metaphors. Just why exactly is a rug the only metaphor that Republicans all seem to agree on? Here’s a summary of many memorable attempts to make health care reform seem familiar — and bizarrely unfamiliar.