I saw a weird poker game on
one of those obscure sports channels buried on cable in the wee hours of the morning.
It was called the Social Security and Medicaid Championship Tournament.
The contestants were a blind
guy, two guys in wheelchairs and a Down Syndrome woman. The grand prize was that
the winner got enough money to be able to tell both Social Security and
Medicaid to fuck off.
Because if you’re a cripple
who needs to collect Social Security and/or Medicaid to survive, you have to be
broke ass and stay broke ass. If you start making much money at all, you get
kicked off because in the eyes of the law you don’t need Social Security and
Medicaid to pay for all your shit anymore because you have money now so you
can pay for it all yourself.
But that’s like being pushed
off of a cliff because being crippled is expensive as hell. You need things uncrippled people don’t have to
worry about like wheelchairs or you may need to pay someone to help you take a
shower or drag yourself in and out of bed. And you have to figure out a way to
pay for all that. So just because you’re making money doesn’t mean that you’re
still not broke ass and you don’t need help paying for all your shit anymore.
About the only way for a cripple to suddenly leave all the public support programs behind and still
function is if they suddenly become a millionaire.
In this poker game, the pot
was a million dollars. These contestants were the final four. They looked at their
cards intensely. The blind guy felt the Braille bumps on his cards. He opened
the bidding by throwing in five chips. The Down Syndrome woman and one of the
wheelchair guys folded.
But the other wheelchair guy
matched the bet. So the blind guy went all in. Not only did he push in all his
chips, he also reached in his pocket and took out all his food stamps and threw
them on the pile. Then he revealed his
hand. He had three kings. The wheelchair guy only had two pair.
The blind guy leapt up from
his chair and raised his fists in triumph. He ripped up his food stamps and threw
them in the air.
The cheerleaders did somersaults of joy. Confetti rained down. The band played a version of Take this Job and Shove it. Except the lyrics were Take this Social Security and Medicaid and Shove it.
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