However, you do not have to pay ALL your income to the nursing home each month. You may keep:
* $59 a month for personal needs such as clothes, toiletries, sundries, etc.(This amount is increased each year in July based on increases in the cost of living adjustment).
* An amount to give to your spouse or other dependent who lives at home for a support allowance. (This important point is explained in more detail below.)
* Amounts to pay for medical items that Medicaid doesn't cover. For example, if you lose a new hearing aid that Medicaid has just paid for, Medicaid may not pay for another hearing aid right away. You can use your monthly income to replace the hearing aid instead of paying the nursing home.
* Any single wartime veteran or surviving spouse of a wartime veteran may be entitled to a pension (currently $90 month) in addition to his/her personal needs allowance.
* A limited home maintenance allowance to pay for certain expenses, including rent or mortgage, for up to 6 months, if you are reasonably expected to return home within that period of time.
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http://www.larcc.org/pamphlets/elderly/pay_nursinghome_t19.htm
at todays prices $60 doesn't buy too much, perhaps they can roll their own.
Dream on. That may be the rule, but it is not the practice here. A lot of patients are vulnerable and hardly able to read the fine print and defend themselves against nurse Kratchit types. Their checks are just direct deposited to the nursing home. On neighbor told her doctor that she would jump off a bridge before she went back to a nursing home. Of course, this is Florida where milking the Medicare money machine is a finely tuned racket.