Recently, the Albuquerque Journal contained a story with the headline "NM Ranks High on Health Care." Since I follow these issues closely and have a pretty good grasp on New Mexico's very real health care problems, I immediately took a closer look. What gave New Mexico such a positive ranking on health care?

The answer, if you can call it that, is contained in a recently-released study by the Trust for America's Health. According to this study, what New Mexico ranks high in is receiving funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Of course, there is no correlation between CDC spending and health care outcomes, but as a Trust spokeswoman said, "New Mexico does well competing for federal health care dollars. Officials in New Mexico have been aggressive and successful in submitting grant requests."

So, while the Trust study claims that more federal funding is needed for disease prevention programs, New Mexico is having great success in accessing more than its share. Maybe the next time the Trust studies health care spending, it will take a look at whether all this money actually achieves intended results.