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FYI they are ruthless. Friend's 99 year old mom needed to go into a nursing home. Since she had sold her house years before they checked bank records and wanted to know about her jewelry. thankfully she passed before entering the nursing home.
We had our home put in an irrevocable trust when we bought it. Believe there is a time period, 30 months or 5 years look back. After that Medicaid cannot touch that asset.
Your "friend" had no clue what they were doing.
Of course there's a look back why is that RUTHLESS? Everybody who's informed knows this.
It's 5 years or 3 year for VA. But that's cool you think the public should pay for your care so you can pass your house equity down to your kids.
Better hope you don't need to move before you die or that you have plenty of money in which case why the trust? Just to screw over the govt?
"Protect our assets from the nursing home".
A phrase that nobody is embarrassed to utter but should be.
Our friend in Utah experienced this. A surgeon had nicked his lung and put him in hospice. He was there almost a year. He has spent many years on public assistance of various sorts, despite being brilliant.
They took his modest little trailer home, but we weren't surprised by that. Just a sad story. Medicaid wouldn't do an elective surgery to fix his leaking aorta; he had to wait for it to burst. So he died rather needlessly.
Our friend in Utah experienced this. A surgeon had nicked his lung and put him in hospice. He was there almost a year. He has spent many years on public assistance of various sorts, despite being brilliant.
They took his modest little trailer home, but we weren't surprised by that. Just a sad story. Medicaid wouldn't do an elective surgery to fix his leaking aorta; he had to wait for it to burst. So he died rather needlessly.
yeah sad but no....it's high risk major open heart surgery with a long recovery time and not everyone is a candidate even in the UK with government medicine.
Highly unlikely that someone already IN hospice would qualify.
As a taxpayer, I'm grateful for their diligence. Too many people live their lives for the moment with no care or concern about what's coming further down the road. My parents worked paycheck to paycheck until they retired, then they cashed out my dad's 401k, paid off the house, and blew through most of their savings on stuff (if you need an extra onion chopper or countertop grill, I have those in spades). It was a shock for Dad to find out when Mom died that he would no longer receive her SS benefit, so he lives on $1708/month and only has about $15K in savings. If he needs care we can't provide, we'll do everything we can to avoid selling the house, but if that's what it comes to, that's what will happen. We're not going to try and cheat the system like so many others do.
They should be as diligent with those receiving government and state benefits thanks to the taxpayers that play the system rather than preying on the elderly.
I know four people, one woman has been on disability most of her adult life, husband claims PTSD (offered to help another veteran how to work the system), woman in town pays $300 in rent, large check from the government, free cellphone, carries a wad of cash, etc. knows exactly how to play the system; a relative of mine claims she cannot work because she was diagnosed with MS, but she has been able to fix and sell several properties herself. Just saying....
My wife's brother was in hospice care for a couple of weeks. After he died, Medicaid wanted $3k. We paid it out of the $15.5k sale of his house, which after fees, inheritance tax, and expenses, was not much over $3k.
If the Medicaid bill had been a little higher we would have just signed the house over to them and let them figure it out.
Most people on Medicaid are not living in mansions. I hope every dollar they can recoup goes back into helping other needy folks.
Kicks above $11-12 million (Depending upon what year he croaked.). Your Uncle must have been loaded, to trigger the "inheritance (estate) tax..."
And you only ended up with "not much over $3,000?"
Somebody didn't have their estate succession planned very well....
I think the difference is this. Those on medicare contributed taxes for most of their life to pay for medicare.
I also paid an enormous amount of Federal income tax over my career. A huge fraction of that funded social services like Medicaid. Plus state income tax where my state pays 50% of Medicaid. Are you subscribing to the great lie that Social Security is a “trust fund”? The money I paid into that program was spent long ago.
I think the difference is this. Those on medicare contributed taxes for most of their life to pay for medicare. Also, we either make or will contributions to medicare out of our social security payments as well. If a benefit is paid for by medicare, the logic is that that benefit was actually earned. Benefits paid by medicaid were not earned. They were extended to the poor and poor elderly by our government to prevent utter destitution and to take care of the poor elderly in some reasonable environment.
I realize there are some complexities here. Medicare does not pay for LTC. However, it was expected that each of us would make those arrangements on our own. Some have done so. Some do not require LTC. Some have private LTC insurance. Others simply plan on paying for LTC out of retirement income and savings. However, there is no secret what these rules are.
I personally believe that a retired person's estate should first pay for all their needs--including LTC. Only if the estate is utterly depleted should the government be paying for LTC.
I think you cannot really say everyone on Medicaid is or was poor and mooching off the state. My sister and her husband owned 3 houses, cars, had stocks in several banks where they lived, received Social Security and had pensions from their jobs that they retired from. They were even invited to stay overnight at the White House because they were big contributors in a Presidential campaign back in the 80s. At 66 she had a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side and ended up in a nursing home. Her husband fell on ice going to see her, broke a hip and had a heart attack before his hip surgery. He ended up in nursing home too. My family moved them to their town and both were in a nursing home receiving therapy for 3 years. Then they bought a house with cash there and paid for 24 hour care in their home. But several years later her husband suffered from dementia and he had to be placed in a nursing home. My sister followed a few months later. So for over 16 years they paid for their care out of pocket selling their homes, selling stocks and bonds, depleting their bank accounts, etc. It cost about $14000 a month while both were alive. That is $168,000 a year so over $2 million before he died. After my BIL died, we sold the last house and paid for her stay for a year or 2 with that. But the money ran out and she had to go on Medicaid. They looked for every asset and even cashed out her whole life insurance policies so even though my sister and I were named as beneficiaries we did not receive anything. She lived on Medicaid for about 3 years and the care at the homes became iffy and treated her totally different than when the pay was out of pocket. Her Social Security went straight to the nursing home and Medicaid paid the rest giving her less than $100 a month to buy clothes, personal care items, etc. They allowed her to keep her prepaid funeral so we only had to pay some of the funeral expense.
Rabflmom, I, for one, did not mean to imply that everyone on Medicaid was poor or a moocher. My beef is with those who feel they must leave "an inheritance" to their adult children and let the tax payers cover nursing home care.
By the time most of us are of nursing home age our children are well into middle age and should be established in their careers. Of course I realise there are outliers but in general, if all have planned well, the offspring should be at a point where any inheritance would be the icing on the cake.
I am sorry that your family had to go through such difficult times. I can only imagine how stressful that must have been.
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