Medicaid (GA) to members: Sign over home or get out of program!

[ecstatic]

This notice is being sent out to nursing home/home health patients in Georgia--if they do not sign over their home to Medicaid by March 31, they will be kicked out the program and receive no more care.

The law requiring estate recovery was passed in 1993, but Georgia will limit its recovery to Medicaid
monies that paid for the member’s medical care beginning August 1, 2001.
Guys, this is going to amount to a recoupment of 100s of thousands of dollars per person (if you're familiar with how much just a year of nursing home/home health services cost--and they are retroactively going back all the way to year 2001!).

What are our medicaid taxes going towards if they are now going to recoup the money anyway from taking over peoples' homes?

[politicat]

1. You're not allowed to have assets....

The * admin and the Contract on America pretty much went in with the idea that government assistance was charity, not something we all pay into as a common fund. Thus, like poorhouses of old, you weren't allowed in if you had any assets at all.

My grandparents very specifically put their houses in trust and put younger family members as trustees so that Florida and Indiana could not seize the family homesteads (both of which have been in the family for 70 and 120 years respectively.)

The tax dollars are being diverted to pay for Halliburton's $4.75 a gallon gasoline and the baloney sandwiches our troops are getting instead of the contracted hot meals.

[Iris]

23. yeah, but at least they got rid of the death tax, right?

assholes.

[politicat]

24. Exactly.

Like the inheritance (the actual name for it) tax really affected most of us - the only reason for the tax was to prevent a permanent class of the monied elite... ya know... an aristocracy.

Things we DON'T need....

[MadMaddie]

2. How is this not illegal?

This country has gone insane!!

[cyclezealot]

5. We now live in France.

No regrets. Health care about 1/3 of US costs. Utilities are cheaper and nursing homes about the same. Plus, should I get sick and miserable, I can go up to Netherlands and end it all, unlike the Fundies as we witnessed in the Schiavo affair.
My mom worries about nursing homes fleecing her. I tell her to come on over. UN health report shows France has highest health care delivery in the industrial world. In the US instead of regulating the wolfes' , the wolfe's take control; confiscate our assets and then put us into bankruptacy. When will poor houses come back. BUt, that would require government funding. Being homeless on the streets is cheaper for society.

[MadMaddie]

9. It is truely sad that America....is not even competitive

with the world on social issues.

No one really wants to come here anymore....

If the Dems ever get back in control...they are going to have to implement and strongly enforce regulations across the board.

I am kind of hoping for the blue states to secede from the Union and implement the good things that America is about.....

[cyclezealot]

13. I like your concept of greater regionalism

But look what federalism under Bush is trying to do to Oregon's suicede assist law passed by a refenderum. We can all fly the US flag,but why do people in blue states have to live like those in Kansas. Note Scotland has its own National Assembly, but they still tacitly are under the Queen's reign.Whhy can't the blue state's develop their own medical system seperate of the craziness of the US non system.

[MadMaddie]

16. Exactly...

You know 6 years ago I wouldn't have thought of this as an option...but the * cabal has made sure that they have divided this country and I don't know if it can be put back together again.

[cyclezealot]

21. It is called the cultural divide.

I agree. It is probably inseperable. Some people are happy with life on the farm. Others not.Why make the two live by the same rules.

[wicket]

14. The Netherlands is one of the few places I can get my "medication" legally

Here in the U.S. I am supposed to suffer with the pain :(

[leeroysphitz]

3. Wow. Now THAT is what I call COMPASSIONATE conservatism

:sarcasm:

[Ksec]

4. more love from the bush administration.

Unbelievable.

They eat the poor. And then snicker about it.

[Midlodemocrat]

17. I hate Bush as much as anyone, but I don't have a problem with this.

My dad received Medicaid and it paid for his nursing home care until he died. It was a very nice place, they took very good care of him. It was $4,000 per month, give or take, and we only had to pay $1380, which was his SS check minus 30 dollars.

My inlaws put their house into the name of their no good POS daughter; it is worth over $600,000, and she was supposed to take care of my FIL. Well, guess what? He lives with us and has no money at all.

Why shouldn't the house he bought and paid for go to help subsidize his healthcare? Why should the government pay when he maneuvered his way around the system? I don't think that is right.

And, in the meantime, my husband and I get to pay for his $3600 worth of yearly drugs.

[ecstatic]

28. Interesting view from the other side.. you raised some good points!

With a home that valuable, how did he end up on medicaid to begin with?

[MadHound]

6. Put everything you have, house, cars, investments, everything

Into a trust. You can set yourself up as trustee, along with somebody to take care of it all when you pass on. But once it is all in a trust, government assholes like these cannot touch it, and you don't even have to disclose its existence.

[patcox2]

8. Thats called welfare fraud.

Actually, a self-settled, self-administered trust is not generally insulated from your creditors.

In order to qualify for medicaid, you would have to diclose it. And the result would be that you would suffer a period of medicaid ineligibility equal to the number of months you get by dividing the amount of money you transferred to the trust by the average monthly cost of nursing home care.

[patcox2]

7. Medicaid is need based and you cannot get it if you own a home.

The asset cap for medicaid is $2,500. Is and always has been. Medicaid is not medicare.

This law applies to people who gave away their house in order to make themselves eligible for medicaid. In other words, its for people who purposely impoverish themselves in order to qualify for welfare.

Whats all the handwringing about? The law simply says they must pay for their care themselves until they have no money, then medicaid will take over.

[cyclezealot]

11. The system stinks.

Most countries regulate the wolves. Most countries have some form of medical coverage including nursing homes.With better coverage at a cheaper cost to society. Nursing homes are a lobbying group fleecing the public owned by the rich corporate chains offering lousy service and outrageous prices. Why do you think the Repugs wanted to deregulate nursing homes. What service need regulation more. Does not have to be this way.
My way of handling how the US treats its people. Get the hell out.
In fact some in need of nursing homes just opt out and become a burden to themselves and all about them. Refuse to be fleeced and so go home to die in neglect. what a country. Hide its' imposed misery and no one cares.

[demosincebirth]

15. You are right.

[Midlodemocrat]

18. I agree with you.

Putting your assets into trusts etc., just means that the taxpayers pay for your care sooner. I don't think that is right.

[donco6]

26. Yes, this has been standard practice for some time.

This is news because . . . ?

[patcox2]

10. Whats a medicaid "member?"

Medicaid is a welfare program for the indigent. It has recipients. They shouldn't be recipients if they own a house, as it is a program for indigents.

[cyclezealot]

12. another victim of US neglect.

those foolish enough to buy insurance. My mom has. Try to read insurance policies. 20 years now of being fleeced by this insurance company. read the small print. covers such a small portion of nursing homes costs. research the company and their financial stability varies. Don't trust they will not bail out of their responsibilities when consumers are in need.
another recepient of the US's neglect. Insurance companies with questionable policies designed to confuse the public. with outrageous premimums.

[SoCalDem]

19. if you are a 50-something or older..GET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER

NOW!!!

Contact a real estate lawyer and see how you can "sell" your house to your kids NOW..while you are healthy..If the house you live in at 70-something is NOT yours, there is NO way the government can come in and sell it out from under you.

This is the result of Bush-legislation aimed at "cheaters" who hide assets, but here's the thing..

Older couples with paid off homes, and who are barely making it, do NOT usually die in their sleep together,.

The usual pattern is for one of them to become ill, and the other becomes the caretaker until their own health starts to fail or the ill one is too ill to remain at home.

What happens next is that the ill one will need nursing home care, and usually it's oout of reach financially for an elderly couple whose only asset is a social security check and a paid off home. If the home is signed over, and is "worth" 200K, then the patient's care up to that point is covered, and when that point is reached, the medicaid will start in, but what does the person who is still living there going to do? Where DOES a 78 yr old woman with very little money and nothing saved in the bank, go?


IF your grown kids are trustworthy and are going to inherit what you have anyway, please see about deeding it over to them while you are healthy and in plenty of time to avoid this new "loophole"..

Rich people do this all the time because they have accountants and lawyers looking out for them..

[cyclezealot]

22. In Europe home health care is cheap.

A friend who has family (cousins) in San Francisco and her parents in Aquatane says to older family members. Get out of the US. Home care is so inexpensive, families can afford it without bankrupting the family or making the healthier spouse ill from tending to the needs of the spouse. Europe too tries to keep the family member at home if possible.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Medicaid vs. Medicare

Since this is a source of confusion for those who have had the pleasure of living outside of the poverty safety net, as patcox2 as written in early posters, MEDICAID is indigent care (regardless of age.) If you aren't poor, you don't qualify. Medicaid is funded and administered by the Feds and states.

MEDICARE on the other hand is a health insurance program for seniors and a limited number of younger people with certain disabilities. Medicare taxes appear on your check stub; Medicaid is a program that is funded (federally) by income taxes just as other social insurance programs such as TANF (welfare.)Medicare does not pay for long term care (nursing homes.) People are expected to pay for that care with their own assets such as the family home, investments, etc. Only when those sources are exhausted will Medicaid be made available. The family home and some assets are generally protected if there is an elderly spouse still living in the home independently.

Many people who can afford to hire accountants and lawyers hide their assets in trusts before Grannie goes into the home so that the family can keep the assets rather than pay for their loved one's care. The laws have been tightened over the years to curb these asset-hiding trusts because Medicaid is funded with a view to providing long term care for all seniors. It may not make sense to exclude long term care from Medicare, but that is the way it is.

[ecstatic]

29. thanks for the clarification..only thing is whyyyy is care so costly?

It gives people motivation to try to cheat the system. But I agree that people should pay if they have the means to.

[KamaAina]

25. Not everyone who owns a home is wealthy

especially not elderly people, who likely bought their home back in the days after WWII when regular middle-class folks could actually afford to do so.

What this amounts to is the politically powerful nursing home industry literally bleeding families dry. Not only that, nursing homes are institutions, in many ways not unlike prison. Community care on the European model is not only cheaper, it respects people's civil rights as affirmed by the Supreme Court in one of its rare lucid moments, the 1999 decision in Olmstead vs L.C. -- a case that, ironically enough, came from Georgia.

[Gormy Cuss]

27. It's an emotional issue.

We are attached to family homes whether by inheriting them or planning to pass them down. The problem is that Medicare doesn't pay for long-term care, but we have seniors who need it. The current rules are that assets should be used before the government/state pays.

The truly wealthy usually pay for in-home nursing staff and avoid nursing homes altogether. The upper middle class generally chose to direct pay for care in congregate facilities. The poor who don't own houses have their care covered by Medicaid.

That leaves the poor to middle class seniors with tangible assets. For some there are retirement funds to draw down first. For others the house is the only thing worth value. The law says pay what you can first, and when that's gone, Medicaid will pay. There are exceptions for attaching the assets when the spouse is still living independently -- granny isn't kicked out in a grab for the house. If the house is sold for more than the life cost of nursing home care, the remainder reverts to the estate. No one likes having to sell the family house to pay for care, but somebody has to pay. The comforting fact is that when the assets are gone the invalid senior isn't getting tossed on the street because there is Medicaid.

I know two middle class people who have saved the family home by having the children buy it at market rate, bank the proceeds, and use them to direct pay for care. The parent is comforted by knowing that the house is still in family hands (and it's still there should the parent's condition allow for visits. The parent also has the sense of continuing to pay his/her own way. The full value of the asset is available for care, the Christmas gathering spot is still there, and the children have a real estate investment. It's a creative way to save the family home without breaking the law.


The idea of community care instead would be great but we don't live in a country that can even figure out how to provide basic health care for the non-elderly.

[Rainscents]

30. I believe, there's new medicaid or bankruptcy law 2003 is very strict on

this issues. Some one here should dig up the law. I think, government can take your property now even if you owe any money for medical bills.

[ananda]

31. Hmm..

Should renters breathe a sigh of relief?

[arikara]

32. On one of those chain type emails that make the rounds

One old gal was taking advantage of the special sales and living cruise ships. She got better, more personalized care including free doctor, maid service, better meals, entertainment and it was cheaper to take a cruise than to pay to live in a retirement home, some of which can be pretty dingy and depressing. Whether it was true or not, if the person is reasonably healthy and only requires assisted living it sounded like a good idea.