I was struck by the claim in today’s New York Times that Maine is a poor state and therefore requires the federal government to rescue it from its health-insurance woes.
I checked. Maine’s median household income was just under $49,000. The national average was just over $51,000. Maine’s poverty rate was around 12 percent. The nation’s was 13 percent.
Maine is almost precisely an average state in terms of income. If the feds are going to be redistributing income to Maine health care, people in richer states are going to be paying a lot more for a lot less.