Posted on 12/16/2013 7:39:27 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
As thousands of state residents enroll in Washington’s expanded Medicaid program, many will be surprised at fine print: After you’re dead, your estate can be billed for ordinary health-care expenses. State officials are scrambling to change the rule.
It wasn’t the moonlight, holiday-season euphoria or family pressure that made Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn, both 62, suddenly decide to get married.
It was the fine print.
As fine print is wont to do, it had buried itself in a long form — Balhorn’s application for free health insurance through the expanded state Medicaid program. As the paperwork lay on the dining-room table in Port Townsend, Prins began reading.
She was shocked: If you’re 55 or over, Medicaid can come back after you’re dead and bill your estate for ordinary health-care expenses.
The way Prins saw it, that meant health insurance via Medicaid is hardly “free” for Washington residents 55 or older. It’s a loan, one whose payback requirements aren’t well advertised. And it penalizes people who, despite having a low income, have managed to keep a home or some savings they hope to pass to heirs, Prins said.
With an estimated 223,000 adults seeking health insurance headed toward Washington’s expanded Medicaid program over the next three years, the state’s estate-recovery rules, which allow collection of nearly all medical expenses, have come under fire.
Medicaid, in keeping with federal policy, has long tapped into estates. But because most low-income adults without disabilities could not qualify for typical medical coverage through Medicaid, recovery primarily involved expenses for nursing homes and other long-term care.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
This stipulation/rule/whatever you want to call it is NOT a byproduct of Expanded Medicare. It has been there for decades IIRC.
People think when you get ‘benefits’ from the government that means you are free and clear. No way. You have to pay what you should, if you have the resources. Read the fine print.
They have something in the estate and they are on Medicaid?
Medicare should be Medicaid.
1.) Extortion rackets aren't backed by the force of law.
2.) Ordinary extortionists normally don't try to steal everything.
It astounds me that when a sick elderly person is thrown into Medicaid at the mercy of the rest of our taxes, that dependents expect that person should be able to keep, and more importantly will over the assets to the children.
The ride is free, but you can’t keep what you squirreled away unless you do it 3 years before.
This approach actually does people a favor by allowing them to defer payment until after they die.
I agree. Most of the ‘heirs’ are thinking only of having one’s cake and eating it too. Without the cost of having to take care of their parents.
I didn’t think you could keep anything. When the assets dwindle to nothing, Medicaid begins. Medicaid is triggered by everything running out.
So, requiring that folks with the means to pay for their own medical care actually do pay for their own medical care is extortion?
They won’t take a house, or a car, or attach earnings. But when you die, they go after what’s left, ahead of heirs, I believe.
GO AHEAD---DISCUSS THIS AROUND THE HOLIDAY TABLE Boobamba's got plans.....secret, nefarious plans for grampa/ma duped into Medicare/Aid. The BOOB can't get 'em to sign up on the flopola healthcare.guv website---so he's throwing hundreds of thousands onto MEDICAID------and all the costs of medical care will be charged back.
How can he do that? By slapping federal and state LIENS against signers' homes, and other assets. NOTE that the Obamacare con artists eliminated the ASSET TEST, (which would have prevented those with assets to even be considered for Medicaid coverage.
So those who now think, "Golly gee, my government loves me, Obama says I qualify for subsidized Medicaid care, I'll be well- taken care of"---have been suckered into a REVERSE ASSET LIQUIDATION FEDERAL MONEY GRAB......And, once in the hands of the Obama Chicago criminal hordes, all that money is untraceable.
======================================================
Obamacare con artists eliminated the ASSET TEST, (which would have prevented those with assets to even be considered for Medicaid coverage). Every person herded onto Medicaid signed away their entire estate to the govt. Heirs get nothing---everything goes to the state to re-coup the expenses incurred under Medicaid. The Obama criminals duped people into a reverse mortgage scheme......
Here's how it works.
The Obama con artists herded seniors WITH ASSETS onto Medicaid---a program specifically structured for the poor.
Herding sickly elderly with assets into Medicaid has ominous consequences intriguing to sap-happy leftists. B/c assets, perhaps a home owned free and clear, securities, annuities, investment property, can be seized to pay for govt treatment.
Thus intergenerational transfers of wealth (a longtime liberal/progressive bugaboo)----are decimated.
This is all part of the plan... elimination of private property rights and rights of inheritance are Planks #1 and #3 of the Communist Manifesto.
Money does horrible things to children. The scheme, rationalize, cajole and wheedle. That money in their parents’ home, their savings, etc. is THEIRS, and by damn, even if the rest of us have to usher the parents off to death on our nickel, they by damn better get theirs.
Most of the Obama supporters don’t worry about this because there typically isn’t anything to take.
It is not elimination of private property. It is compensating the public for a debt incurred. Geez.
That is true. But in ANY case wrt Medicaid, I believe the cost of managing one’s death at taxpayer expense should be repaid.
A federal deficit in excess of $20T is not an intergenerational transfer of wealth?
Yes, Medicaid is a welfare program, for the poor. If you’re not poor, but rather hiding assets and taking the benefits, and then your estate turns out to have money in it after all, the government claws that back.
Those are the rules of the game, hardly fine print and absolutely not new. If you depend on the government’s benefits, you play by the government’s rules.
I’ve been shouting this on this and other forums for months now.
Medicaid is a reverse mortgage on steroids and crack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.