90 seconds to ObamaCare [update 8]

If you can’t follow the rules, you just change the rules—at least, that’s the way you do it if you’re a politician.

Want to know the process whereby Obama’s nationalised healthcare is about to become law? The Democrats’ post-modern law-making process explained in ninety seconds [hat tip Vulcan’s Hammer]:

UPDATE 1: Rep. Alcee Hastings speaks:

    “There ain’t no rules here, we’re trying to accomplish something….All this talk about rules…. When the deal goes down… we make ‘em up as we go along.” [Hat tip The New Clarion]

UPDATE 2: “Get Ready for Health Insurance Slumlords,” says Brian Schwartz.

    “ObamaCare would force insurers to behave as slumlords, much like rent control does.” [Hat tip Thrutch]

UPDATE 3: “Mandatory Health Insurance; Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America.”

UPDATE 4: If ObamaCare Passes Later Today..., then Paul Hsieh at the Freedom & Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) blog has some links for you.

UPDATE 5:

    “The sun has now set and risen again a total of 275 times since it first shone down on the Obama health plan.  Barring some unforeseen snag, the House of Representatives will hold the final vote on that legislation around 6pm Eastern Time today. It will do so without ever laying eyes on a complete cost estimate…”

Continue reading Michael Cannon’s ObamaCare Cost-Estimate Watch, Day #275.  And there’s this, ObamaCare’s Actual Price Tag:

    “To hear Democrats tell it, the Congressional Budget Office projects the legislation would cost a mere $940 billion over the next 10 years….the actual cost of the bill is nearly $3 trillion….
    “Yet this legislation would set in motion political forces that would make additional spending inevitable…”

UPDATE 6:

• THE TIMES (London), ‘ Barack Obama poised to win healthcare battle’: “The Bill, if passed, will bring near-universal health coverage to the US for the first time in the country’s history by requiring individuals to buy insurance and subsidise cover for those who cannot afford it… The passions fuelled by more than a year of furious argument from town hall meetings in Arizona to the floor of the Senate were on display again in Washington at the weekend.”
• POWERLINE, ‘Silver Linings’: “With Stupak's collapse [NB: Stupak is “an anti-abortion Democrat”], passage of the Democrats' government medicine bill is assured…”
• FOX NEWS: ‘House OKs Key Step Toward Health Insurance Overhaul’: “The House voted 224-206 Sunday to approve the rules for debate of a massive health insurance overhaul that evidently satisfies few but is viewed by House Democrats as better than nothing.”
• NY TIMES, ‘House Clears Path for Final Health Vote’: “By a vote of 224-206, the House of Representatives approved the key procedural measure necessary to pass major health care legislation…”
• CNN.COM, ‘Here's the latest on what's happening on Capitol Hill...’  “The vote to begin the debate on landmark U.S. health care legislation was 224-206, a good indication that Democrats have enough votes to pass the landmark measure itself…”
• ABC NEWS: ‘House Passes Health Care Bill, Sweeping Legislation on Its Way to Become Law.’ “Anti-Abortion Democrats' Decision to Vote 'Yes' Puts Bill Over the Top.”

UPDATE 7: Alex Epstein at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights observes “The White House says we ‘just can’t wait’ for its government solution to our health care problems. But today’s health-care problems were created by yesterday’s government ‘solutions.’”

    “Since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a ‘right’ that others must provide, the government has made a growing number of Americans collectively responsible for each other’s care--through Medicare, Medicaid, and collectivized employer plans. These government programs incentivized people to spend much, much more on health care--since they were spending other people’s money--and warped the market. Without such intervention, we should expect health care to be like laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, but gets better and cheaper all the time.
    “America ‘can’t wait’--for the government to get out of health care. Disentangling government from that field is the task of true reform.”

Which, of course, is precisely the opposite aim to ObamaCare.

UPDATE 8: “Darkness Descends”