Former New York Liberal Party boss Ray Harding pleaded guilty yesterday in the ongoing and on-growing Albany pension-fund-hedge-fund corruption scandal, admitting that he “accepted more than $800,000 in exchange for doing favors for Alan G. Hevesi, the former state comptroller; among the favors was a scheme to secure an Assembly seat for Mr. Hevesi’s son,” reports the Times and other outlets.

In a little-noticed corner of the scandal: how did Harding “help” Hevesi and his son?

Hevesi and his son (allegedly, etc.) had their eye on a state Assembly seat for the younger Hevesi — but someone was inconveniently sitting in it.

Problem solved: Harding “helped arrange a $150,000-a-year job for [the] Queens assemblyman, Michael Cohen, at the Health Insurance Plan of New York,” the Times notes. Harding had an “in” at the Health Insurance Plan (HIP), since he had previously exploited his political ties to serve as a lobbyist for HIP.

This detail illustrates the coziness between New York’s massive healthcare industry and its government. This casual coziness helps explain why we have a $50 billion Medicaid program and nobody cares to do anything about it.