McAllen Gets a Break (Finally!)

I must admit that I’ve been distressed to see McAllen at the bottom of the journalistic dog pile these past few months. First it was Dr. Atul Gawande’s story saying that McAllen had the highest Medicare costs in the nation. Next Newsweek chimed in with a story about McAllen being the worst place for allergy suffers in the nation. (After living in Austin and McAllen I can tell you that Austin has McAllen beat hands down.)

It seemed as if the rest of the nation had it in for one of my most favorite border cities. Well today, McAllen finally gets a break. NPR reports that a” highly anticipated report from an independent agency that oversees Medicare measured the program’s spending differently, and it knocks McAllen to number 14 out of 403 locales, behind three other Texas cities, including Lubbock, and parts of Louisiana and Oklahoma.”

Sometimes it’s good not to be number one.