Monday, February 15, 2010

Wagers Anyone?

I will bet my left kidney that this is another such is blogging moment:

While looking for information on Deval Patrick's new idea for controlling costs in Massachusetts (more on which later), I came across this opinion piece in the Huffington Post, titled "New York City Sinks If Health Care Reform Fails." I find this a bit surprising, because first of all, New York City already has a third of its residents on Medicaid; and second of all, the city already has all the main features of the proposed insurance plan except the mandate. (bold mine ~ed)
Although, I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with an extra left kidney when I win.

7 comments:

Ken Houghton said...

It has taken me less than ten minutes--probably less than five--to find, download, and Unzip Table VII.3, Medicare enrollment by State (2008 data).

The STATE of New York has 2,891,085 enrollees. The city of New York has about 8-10MM people. The state has just under 20 million (Table VII.4, enrollees as percent of pop, NY: 14.8%).

Unless ALL of those people live in NYC--the only profitable part of the state--McMegan is so far off that calling it SWAG would be amazingly generous.

CaptBackslap said...

Ken: Medicaid, not Medicare.

As much as I hate to say it, Megan probably isn't far off here; according to http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/medicaid.pdf , NYC had 2.4 million Medicaid recips at the end of 2002. It's not hard to imagine that number being up to 2.7 million now, although of course we wouldn't have to imagine it if Megan would cite her damned sources like a real reporter.

Mr. Wonderful said...

"Although, I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with an extra left kidney when I win."

Dude, what are you, new here?

Ebay. ("No reserve! Includes shipping!")

M. Bouffant said...

I'd stay off ebay until one can be sure that Calif. gubernatorial candidate & former ebay chair Nut-Meg Whitman doesn't still have stock or income from the company.

Unknown said...
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NutellaonToast said...

I did some digging a bit ago and found 4.4 million for the state currently, with 8.5 of 20 million people in NYS living in NYC, so the numbers might actually be close. I mostly just felt like being a jackass, but I am surprised that almost 1/4 of all NYSers are on medicaid.

Of course, this is further proof that the free market is the way to go.

blivet said...

I was listening to NPR this morning and they had a report centering on a Massachusetts nurse's aide who was on Medicaid. WTF? This is someone who works in the health care industry who can't afford health care! No, nothing wrong here.