In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat held up Texas as “model citizen” in this difficult economy. And while I’ll take a back seat to no one in my regard for my home state, I have to take issue with Douthat’s suggestion that President Obama should be looking to Texas as he tries to figure out a way to fix health care. As I’ve written before, the state offers some of the best examples of what is wrong with health care in America; it has the highest rate of uninsured in the country, and an insurance market that can charitably be described as a mess. Atul Gawande’s often-cited New Yorker piece earlier this year spotlighted the border city McAllen as a textbook case of a medical system gone crazy. This kind of excess is not only wasteful but tragic, considering that McAllen is in one of the poorest areas in the country, a place with so many unmet needs.

But in the past week, we’ve seen a couple of articles that help us understand why. And it turns out to be about politics. Specifically, about political connections and money: