Corzine Care and Viagra

Corzine Care is supposed to provide health coverage for 760,000 citizens (well, we assume those eligible for coverage would be citizens) for an initial investment of $15 million. To give you an idea just how ridiculous the price tag Corzine puts on his proposed plan is, consider this from the Star-Ledger:

Overall New Jersey covered the costs of Viagra and related drugs for 18,163 people through Medicaid, NJ Family Care and General Assistance programs in 2004 at a cost of $3.9 million.

More than one-quarter of New Jersey's sex offenders considered most likely to commit their crimes again received state-funded Viagra, state officials said Thursday.

People can debate whether or not taxpayers should have to pay for Viagra, especially for sex offenders, but our point relates to the cost to provide coverage for only this one drug. New Jersey taxpayers are spending an average of $214.72 per person for Viagra. That’s why Corzine’s $19.33 cost per person for comprehensive medical care is absurd.

To add insult to injury, now it turns out Viagra may have a very serious side effect:

Federal health investigators are looking into reports that some men who used Viagra may have suffered a new and very serious side effect -- blindness.

We thought going blind was an old wives tale related to ….. You just can't make this stuff up.