Medicaid eligibility varies from state to state. According to the Kaiser Foundation, over 10% of New York Medicaid recipients have incomes above 300% of the FPL. In Texas, the number is 7.3%. You also fail to consider the number of illegal immigrants in each state–they are not supposed to be eligible for Medicaid but, especially before 2006, routinely enrolled. Many appeared to have switched to SCHIP after real ID went into effect. Numbers from the GAO in May, 2004, suggest that Texas had 1,041,000 illegal residents and that New York had 489,000.

In short, your numbers say nothing about whether New York or Texas enrolls too many or too few Medicaid recipients.

A place like New Mexico then with large government expeditures on Nuclear Research among other things, other states with many large Military bases, or even states with large federal ownership of land or national parks would not represent just welfare but total federal dollars, meaning unless we can see only what is paid out in Welfare dollars and then a definition of what welfare dollars are, assuming that all federal government payments are welfare would be inaccurate or purposefully misleading.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/92.html

The population of Texas is about 24,000,000 with 16.7% of the population living under the poverty line, or about 4,000,000. The total Medicaid enrollment for Texas is about 2,900,000. The population of New York is about 17,000,000 with a 14.2% of the population living under the poverty line, or about 2,400,000. The total Medicaid enrollment for New York is about 4,200,000. Now, Medicaid eligibility is supposed to be twice the poverty line. It’s obvious to me that Texas must make it much more difficult for Medicaid eligible people to enroll. Not inconceivable in a state that prides itself on having one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. If you look at Medicaid spending per person covered, I’m sure you’ll find the number are much closer.

Since we’re on the topic of transfer payments, lets look at the ratio of federal taxes paid to total federal benefits received by state. My geography isn’t perfect, but its clear that three of the states in black are New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The ratio of federal benefits to federal taxes paid for those three states are .79, .61 and .82. So, in fact the “most socialist” states pay more then they receive. Now, lets look at three of the light colored state, who most of you think are the least socialist. Those are Texas, Mississippi and Georgia.
For every dollar of federal taxes paid, they receive .94, 2.02 and 1.44. The only one that pays more in taxes they they receive in benefits is Texas, and by a smaller margin then the three dark colored states. So much for that theory.