Big medical money.

If you want your head to start spinning, take a look at the trio of stories on this week's front page involving government expenditures on medicine.

A reader can quickly go from the elation of Florida getting $159 million in new Medicaid funding to outrage about $300 million unspent money piling up in Miami-Dade County to bewilderment about the interminable length of time its taking to get a new contractor to review Medicaid expenditures in Florida.

Funding surrounding Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami-Dade seems especially peculiar. The hospital gets $87 million in general revenue from the county and $135 million from a half-penny sales tax. No one should begrudge that: The hospital has a difficult and challenging job serving many of the poor of Miami-Dade.

But there's a surplus that has reached up to $300 million in the coffers of the Public Health Trust, which doles out money to Jackson.

Now, $30 million of $159 million in new state Medicaid funding will go to Jackson as well. Should the average citizen be glad or puzzled about why Jackson gets more money when there is up to $300 million sitting in the bank? The average citizen would probably say, "I'm feeling pretty sick about this right now. How about giving me back my halfpenny in tax?"

Meanwhile, there's the drama of seven hospitals seeking a slice of the $300 million pot. Clearing the way for them is Rep. Carlos Lacasa, R-Miami, who couldn't seem to remember why he sponsored a bill last session that allows the hospitals to seek their share of the pot. (He probably got this response from page 12, section 5A of the well-thumbed, "Political Evasion Handbook" used in the county.)

But in the wonder world of Miami-Dade politics, a state law doesn't mean county commissioners actually ...