File this one under "Law of Unintended Consequences" and hope to God someone brings this to the attention of the relevant parties:

Where are the chips falling, so to speak, when it comes to the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)? The press ought to be finding out, and fast. Last week, the Children’s Defense Fund sent me an invitation for an informational call discussing SCHIP’s future: “If the Senate doesn’t take a stand for children in the next days or weeks, our worst fears could clearly come to pass.” The dire-sounding invite piqued my interest, especially since I had read in the House bill that SCHIP would be repealed. What was going on?

It turns out that the House indeed wants to repeal the program and require kids to get coverage via the insurance exchange, the government’s soon-to-be gigantic brokerage service. Their parents, of course, would be getting subsidies to help buy coverage, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat no less, touted the advantages of dumping SCHIP. One advantage: the program wouldn’t be subject to the periodic and occasionally problematic Congressional reauthorizations that threaten its existence. Dingell said kids could have the same insurance as their parents—an incentive to force parents to cover their kids. (Sometimes parents, daunted by bureaucratic red tape, don’t enroll their children even if they are eligible.)

Another reason for killing SCHIP, some believe, is to force kids into the new exchange’s risk pool. Kids are usually healthy; bringing them into the pool may help spread the risk and keep premiums somewhat lower for the sick people whom insurers would have to cover.

But in return, kids would be hurt, says Alison Buist, director of child health at the Children’s Defense Fund. She told me that if the House provision were to take effect, kids might lose some valuable and comprehensive benefits now available to kids on Medicaid and SCHIP. If parents, strapped for cash, had to shop in the exchange, they might choose low-cost insurance with skimpy benefits and pay more out-of-pocket than SCHIP currently requires them to pay. SCHIP rules limit a family’s out-of-pocket costs to five percent of their income. States don’t even impose the five percent, Buist said, because they have found parents with low incomes couldn’t pay that much. So it seems that there’s a cost shift here—making poor families pay more so that sick (and most likely older) people buying in the exchange would pay less.

The more I see of this Frankenstein plan, the more I see we need single-payer universal coverage. Period.

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You had to figure that the moment you saw that "concerned father" harassing John Dingell at the town-hall meeting on health care in Michigan, he'd be showing up eventually on Fox News. After all, it's what they do.

Sure enough, he was on Fox's America's Newsroom this morning with Megyn Kelly. He was a bit nervous, but he managed to still say some extraordinarily incendiary things -- not to mention reveal that he's a "deather":

Sola: The harm that is being done is being done by this administration and the Congress. They want to foist on us a health-care plan that they themselves will not take. I challenge Barack Obama, members of Congress -- of both parties -- if you believe so much in this plan, then you use it on your family before you put it on our families. What you are doing is sentencing our families to death.

We lose the right to life. Old people are discarded. Those who cannot fend for themselves are discarded. There is no liberty under your plan. And that's the problem -- the people have seen it, the people know it, you can't hide it from the American people anymore.

If I'm a thug, fine. Don't call my son a thug, and don't call those old ladies and old men that are senior citizens like I am, thugs, and a mob. We are not. We are American citizens who want one thing: To be heard before you put us down.

If you want a good example of why we are where we are on this health-care debate, this one is prime: It shows just how deeply a segment of the American population is willing to believe things that simply are not true, provably so.

These are people who believe it's objectively true that the Obama administration's health-care reforms will lead to a mass killing of the elderly and denial of treatment for Obama's opponents. If you want to know why teabaggers are so worked up, this is why: They really believe this stuff.

This kind of alienation from fact-based reality was a significant component of the dynamic behind the "Patriot"/militia movement of the 1990s. It's embodied by the selective "skepticism" of such folks: Anything the runs counter to their belief system is dismissed as "the official story" which is only believed by "gullible" folks (and indeed is more evidence of the ongoing conspiracy), while any kind of outrageous nonsense that supports their belief system is seized up on as "secret truth".

It was a decidedly unhealthy trait when manifested among a relatively small group of people like the Patriots, because these beliefs formed the foundation for a broad range of radical extremism, including violence and armed standoffs with federal authorities.

The prospects of it now becoming a common pathology among the general conservative-movement population -- thanks to its open support from folks like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich (not to mention Fox News) -- are very disturbing indeed.

It's official:

California Rep. Henry A. Waxman on Thursday officially dethroned longtime Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, upending a seniority system that has governed Democratic politics in the House for decades.

In a secret ballot vote in the Cannon Caucus Room, House Democrats ratified an earlier decision by the Steering and Policy Committee to replace the 82-year-old Dingell with his 69-year-old rival. The vote was 137-122 in favor of Waxman.

The ascension of Waxman, a wily environmentalist, recasts a committee that Dingell has chaired since 1981 with an eye toward protecting the domestic auto industry in his native Michigan. The Energy and Commerce Committee has principal jurisdiction over many of President-elect Barack Obama's top legislative priorities, including energy, the environment and health care.

As John says, this is truly welcome news. We may finally get some oversight from this committee. Matt Stoller has more.

John Dingell talked about faith and Christmas with Keith in a plain and thoughtful way, while laughing at the "war on Christmas," theme that has been promoted by the usual subjects.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (hat tip truthstream)

He understands that there are more important things to sort out in Congress than the idiotic "resolution 579"