OKAY (OKAY) JUST A LITTLE PINPRICK...

...but there'll be plenty more AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH when you see the state's price tag for the lancets and test strips provided by Medicaid to diabetics. Over $13 million frittered away over five years, just on excesses in this one small subset of medical supplies:

Auditors also found that DOH’s claims processing system, eMedNY, does not prevent providers (pharmacies) from billing for or recipients from obtaining more diabetic testing supplies than what New York guidelines allow. For example, one recipient received 9,650 test strips in a one-year period by going to multiple pharmacies, including 2,900 test strips in one month. The recipient would have had to test his or her blood sugar 96 times a day to use all of the 2,900 test strips in that month. Nine of the 10 states examined as part of the audit said they limit diabetic testing supplies by recipient, not by provider as New York does.

Next step, as always, is to follow the money - and see who in Albany is receiving largesse from the makers and marketers of the lancets and testing strips. Meantime, here's some Floyd to set the mood for all those needles we're stuck paying for:

LOOK WHO'S BACK

Bow-chicka-bow-chicka-bow-bow. It's the Steamroller!

And third, as Eric R. Dinallo, the superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department, has wisely pointed out, we will have to step back from the current environment in which government has become a guarantor of all major risk.

So says the former governor of the state with the $60 billion Medicaid budget, the gold-plated pension system for government employees, and the ironclad incumbency-protection plan for members of the state legislature.

Although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past...

Mistakes? A mistake is when you use baking soda in the recipe instead of baking powder, not when you damn well know what you're doing is wrong on multiple levels and do it anyway.

I very much hope and expect that President Obama and his new administration will have the strength and wisdom to do again what FDR did.

What - extend the hard times?

BULLET SNIFFED AT BUT STILL UNBITTEN

Gov. Paterson rolled out his budget-cut ideas today, trying to save two billion bucks without laying anybody off. Good luck with that. Let's see:

Medicaid/health care: Recommends $18 billion in Medicaid and other health care savings over the next two years by reducing reimbursement rates (8 percent in 2008-09, 2 percent in 2009-10) and eliminating "trend factor increases across all sectors." The insurance industry will contribute more in assessed fees. Also, the plan calls for cuts to the $100 million fund that offsets the costs of Timothy's Law, which requires parity for mental health treatment by health insurance companies, by $88 million in 2008-09 and $91 million in 2009-10.

And the Medicaid fraud investigators will continue to stagger along as best they can, meaning we'll get the occasional bust of the most obvious crooks but not the billions in savings that could be realized with simple competent oversight - but on the other hand, most of the legislature is unwilling even to take Paterson's baby steps.

Also making another appearance is the Bigger Better Bottle Bill:

He wants to expand the 5-cent deposit of beer and soda containers to include water and non-carbonated beverages to benefit the Environmental Protection Fund, which would suffer a countervaling $50 million cut.

I'm in favor of this mainly because it would make my sorting job a whole lot less confusing, especially since I'm trying to teach two small kids about recycling. I'd jack the deposit up to a dime and let redeemers keep some of the proceeds if they agree to set up their machines to take containers they didn't sell. It drives a guy nuts to roll into the Hannaford and realize those Stop & Shop bottles are going to have to wait until the next trip. Also, with winter coming it'll make for less stuff to schlep out to the road every Tuesday morning.