WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Big Blue is Killing Upstate New York.

Tucker walks through the destruction wrought by two policies in particular. New York spends twice the national average on its Medicaid system, even though cheaper systems, like California’s, work better. Moreover, New York, unlike other states, requires cities and counties to help fund the Medicaid system. So the cost of maintaing a poorly functioning Medicaid system gets partially shunted onto upstaters who can’t afford it.

In the high-income playground New York City has become, residents can bear terrible government, excessive taxes, and burdensome regulations. The money wealthy New Yorkers make has helped keep afloat a blue model system that would have collapsed otherwise. But upstate, poorer Americans are reeling from the impact of over-regulation, and the region is drying up. NYC’s blue progressives think of themselves as champions of the little guy and the poor. Upstate New York gives the lie to that self-assessment.

This is a result of the poorly conceived Supreme Court decisions in Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims. They should be revisited.