One in Five Americans Receive Medicaid?

In a letter to Pres. Obama, Sen. Rockefeller and 36 other Senate Democrats wrote...

We are unwilling to allow the federal government to walk away from Medicaid’s 68 million beneficiaries, the providers that serve them and the urban and rural communities in which they live.

This was sent in response to the Republican proposal to turn Medicaid into a block grant program, which would end the Federal match for state Medicaid spending and distribute the Federal subsidy as a defined amount. It's an interesting debate, but what caught my attention was the "68 million beneficiaries."

According to this website, the current U.S. population estimate is approximately 311 million. If there are really 68 million Medicaid beneficiaries, that means approximately 21% of the U.S. population is currently receiving Medicaid benefits.

Huh?! One in five Americans are currently on Medicaid? Really?

I figured the Senate Democrats had to be exaggerating the number, so I did a search for the "real" number. That led me to this website, which says that as of May 2010 there are 48 million Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare and Medicaid are not the same thing. But I'm pretty sure there aren't as many Medicaid beneficiaries as there are for Medicare. So I kept searching.

And found this, posted at cms.gov, which appears to be a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. It says that as of June 30, 2009, there were over 50 million Medicaid enrollees. Un. Bee. Lee. Vuh. Bull. That's 16% of U.S. population, or one in six.

So yeah, it looks like the Senate Democrats' number is wrong. But not by as much as I thought.

(via Peter Suderman via Insta.)

Milbank on Risk-Taking Politicians

I don't normally agree with Dana Milbank's politics, but I think he nailed today's column:

The discussion, before Spitzer moved on to “other stories I’ll be drilling down on,” was about Weiner’s “strategy” for political survival. That’s a fun parlor game, but whether Weiner survives is hardly important. Of more consequence is what’s driving all these men (and the occasional woman) to reckless behavior.

Some apologists claim these men simply have more testosterone, and greater libido, than the general population. More likely, it’s the same thing that is causing many more of their colleagues to engage in reckless behavior in their professional lives: a sense of invincibility.

Milbank concludes by writing "We’d be better off if lawmakers gambled more with their private parts and less with the public good." Makes me wonder if Milbank is spending any time thinking about what additional limits we should impose on government in general, and Washington in particular.

Eclipse Command Shortcut

Wow, long time no post.

Just ran across something very cool in Eclipse: Ctrl+Shift+L pops up a list of editor commands, displaying the shortcut for each. Handy way to recall those hard-to-remember commands (like Shift-Alt-Z).

Krauthammer ROCKS

What a great column. I could wish he'd left out the barb about "even the Democrats" at the end, but so what.

I really appreciate what he says about challenging Reaganism. He's absolutely right. The Republican social conservatives got out of control during/following the Clinton administration, and we didn't have an opposition President to challenge them. Now we do, and the culture war issues seem to be taking their proper priority.

Krauthammer indeed rocks.

Code Editors

What I want in a code editor or IDE...
- Fast: no slow down when I open files or type. Also if it takes longer than 30 seconds to open a project, it's too slow
- Project navigation: hot key for opening files, tree control for browsing folders and packages
- Debugging: integration with the debugger, including breakpoints, stepping, etc.
- Source control: integrates with my source control tool, checks out edited files, adds new files
- Formatting

Nice to have, but not necessary...
- Unit testing: integrates with JUnit and/or TestNG so I can launch unit tests from within the IDE
- Code completion
- Syntax highlighting
- Error highlighting
- File templates
- Open source

What I DON'T want in a code editor or IDE...
- Build tools
- Fancy plug-in structures that allow the IDE to become whatever some hacker wants
- That includes plug-ins designed for different languages
- Having to troubleshoot exotic errors in order to get basic things like source control and unit testing to work

Insurance Anti-Trust Legislation, Addendum

If this keeps up, Nancy Pelosi will soon propose compensation caps for tort lawyers!

Insurance Anti-Trust Legislation

What an amazing opening for Republicans who want insurance companies to be able to compete across state lines. The approach writes itself: Democrats want to repeal anti-trust protection for insurance companies? Great! While we're at it, let's eliminate state regulation and open up the playing field so insurance companies can truly compete nationwide. Now we're talking real health insurance reform!