In Nebraska, a loophole in a newly changed law intended to provide safe havens for infants born to teenage mothers has had the unintended consequence of allowing parents of children of any age to legally abandon them. Legal abandonment has long been the insurance of last resort for parents of chronically ill children forced to buy insurance on the individual market. But now even healthy children are being abandoned.

Enter Nebraska, where a well intentioned legal change has illustrated the difficulty of preserving families when jobs disappear.

Parents of even healthy children who might have been able to care for children are leaving children as old as 17 at designated child abandonment safe havens. Not wanting their children to starve, living in cars, etc, many have been giving their children up to become wards of the state, where they can receive health insurance, dental care, and food.

Enter President Elect Obama. Obama has promised to "change" healthcare in 2012 while keeping the expensive insurance companies in the loop, mandating parents to "insure" their children, making it affordable by giving them the "choice" of buying high deductible health care plans or capped plans, if that is all they can afford. (They are supposed to put the thousands of dollars they are saving in tax free medical savings accounts so that when bills come, they will be ready, however, few people have the money. Also, IF they even momentarily drop coverage for a sick child (for example, are 15 minutes late with a payment) and get sick during that time, they will be dropped and not be able to buy insurance again. Also, many parents will not be able to afford individual insurance for their children if their chldren have chronic diseases because the insurance companies quoted profitable "fair price" will be based on their very small group, and priced by its risk. If one member of a family sized group has high risk, the fair price is a high price.)

Some "choice"! High deductible health plans will leave parents struggling with hundreds or thousands of dollars in unpaid bills before they reach deductibles, and all expenses over lifetime or monthly or yearly caps. People will see bills that represent costs that they are not able to cope with. This will lead to an epidemic in child abandonment.

No efforts will be made by individuals fighting for their survival against the system, each alone and isolated. No realistic government efforts will be made to contain costs, as are done with Medicare.

This will lead to a boon for faith based adoption agencies as children are given up by their desperate birth parents.

There's more...

Evangelicals seem to be odd man out this political season. Their much-vaunted voting block isn't concrete-solid this time around. McCain courts them with little success, even after gratuitously changing his official religion from those darn liberal Episcopalians to the more palatable and conservative Baptists. Obama's working the liberal evangelicals with daily mentions of his faith and a new evangelical plank - faith-based initiatives.

La Bama isn't talking the moribund photo-op that God's Main ManTM kicked off to lefty howls and Congressional reticence. No, he'll give it a shiny new name - the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships - and elevate it to the moral center of his administration. I'm not clear where the moral center of his administration is and whether jamming "neighborhood" into the title makes it taste any better to the opposition. We'll see.

It was lead balloon time when Obama raised the flag. The liberal rank and file did not salute. Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State summed it up, "I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration. It ought to be shut down, not continued."

He's right about Bush policies being daft and there are legitimate concerns about the integrity of the firewall between church and state. However, Obama argues there's a great humanitarian need out there and the nation needs all the help it can get to fill it.

There's more...