What do you do if you're a poor man, and you want to remove your penis?  You're barely making ends meet.  You can't pay your rent, electricity, and food bill and still have enough money to get your penis removed.  That's why the Obama administration is doing the right thing and having taxpayer-funded Medicare paying for penis extractions.

The New York Times had a touching story about a gay AIDS-infected man with a number of names – Jerome, Meeka, Kricket, and even "Thunderpussy" (whom I will henceforth call "Mr. TP") – who desperately needed his penis removed in order convince himself that he is a woman.

Medicare lifted its ban on gender reassignment surgery last year. The federal government ordered its insurance carriers to cover transition-related care for its employees. And nine state Medicaid programs have dropped their exclusions for transgender health care, with New York doing so this past March.

Seizing the opportunity, Ms. Nimmons was about to become one of the first low-income New Yorkers to undergo a genital reconstruction paid for by Medicaid. In a few hours, if all went well, her body would be aligned with her identity for the first time, and she would no longer be "a chick with a wiener[.]"

That's right.  Mr. TP is about to be promoted to disfigured man.

Peering under the sheet that draped her that early October morning at a hospital outside Philadelphia, Ms. Nimmons bade farewell to what she called "my friend" — that "extra part" for which she was pronounced male at birth. Tattooed on her right forearm was her birth name, "Jerome," complete with quotation marks.

A good thing Mr. TP doesn't want his right arm cut off to also prove he's a woman!

"When I lay down and when I wake up, I'll be a whole new creature..." Ms. Nimmons declared. 

A creature.  Like Frankenstein, or the Wolfman/Wolfperson.

Over the course of this year, Ms. Nimmons has often said she never expected to make it to 40, much less to "complete" the long, lonely journey from Jerome through Meeka (her interim name) and Magnolia Thunderpussy (her drag name) and now Kricket.... Kricket, with a C, was a character she admired on "The Young and the Restless," a blond model turned Legal Aid lawyer.

Ms. Nimmons had settled into New York with remarkable alacrity.

Do you think that "alacrity" is really the most remarkable thing about Mr. TP?

Within weeks of arriving, she secured a spacious one-bedroom apartment on an eastern Brooklyn boulevard through the city's H.I.V./AIDS Services Administration, and obtained food stamps. Ms. Nimmons was determined to get by on a monthly disability check of $722.... she spent a lot of time in her bare-walled apartment, watching television talk shows, reality shows and nighttime soap operas.

This is why Mr. TP needs Medicare.  Watching soap operas simply doesn't bring in enough money to get your penis cut off.  Try it yourself and see!

Until her last arrest in 2011, she had provided for herself by hustling, she said. Some hustles were legal, like her makeup jobs, and some were not, like forging checks and committing credit card fraud.

I hope that Mr. TP is making an honest man of himself.  Or herself.  Or whatever he/she/they are.  Now he won't be stopped by the TSA for trying to smuggle male genitals on an airplane.  And with taxpayer-subsidized lessons on how to talk like a girl, Mr. TP can pass for whatever he likes.

And what do you think will happen when Mr. TP starts lurking in ladies' bathrooms?

Exit question: If Mr. TP is gay and Mr. TP removes his penis, grows breasts, and talks with a lilt, and Mr. TP is attracted to men, is Mr. TP still gay, heterosexual, or none of the above?

This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.