It turns out that people whose health care is covered under Medicaid, the program for the poorest of us, are required, by the fine print in the contract, to pay back after death whatever healthcare costs they had which were covered by Medicaid. It is possible when Medicaid was enacted that not many poor people would have estates worth seizing, but times have changed, and the poor now have more money and property than they used to. And so people are now dying thinking they’ve left a little bit for their children only to discover, much too late, that they’ve left it to the government.

I hope that on the day I croak
I’m penniless, in fact dead broke
When they insist that I be billed
I’ll rest content, a life fulfilled