Medicaid Stat of The Day: NY Edition

1 in 4 New Yorkers (state, not city) is on Medicaid.

Cuomo's Medicaid Warning - WSJ.com: "Over the years the Empire State has expanded this joint state-federal program originally meant for poor women and children deep into the middle class—much like the model the 2010 health bill will impose on all states in 2014. Mr. Cuomo's ambitious reform plan runs in the opposite direction, and little wonder. Spending for this $53 billion-plus program in New York will increase automatically by 13% this year even as Mr. Cuomo must close a $10 billion deficit. In his executive budget, Mr. Cuomo proposed cutting $982 million, or 2%. To find another $2.9 billion this year and $4.6 billion next, he appointed a 27-member 'stakeholder' panel, which is due to report next month. Graded on the Albany curve, merely floating such heresies is astonishing against a heretofore inviolable claim on taxpayers. Today, one of four New Yorkers is on Medicaid, which is staggering. A quarter of a rich state's entire population is dependent on government health care. Recall that ObamaCare will bring national Medicaid enrollment to about the same level. ... New York Medicaid has also become a kind of a health-care Tammany Hall, and not only for the usual entitlement reason of the political class promising ever-richer benefits to more and more people to win re-election. The program's price controls and operational details are explicitly spelled out in legislative statute; most states give Governors more administrative discretion. With its usual subtlety, Albany uses this power to directly subsidize constituencies like the greater New York City hospital industry and SEIU 1199, the powerful health-care workers union."