If you happen to get poor before growing old, you go on Medicaid.I wouldnt deem them all leeches.
Almost everyone who ends up in a nursing home will need Medicaid (unless they die before spending all their money).
That's true, but one of the outrageous things is that here in TN, the state charges nursing homes over $2600/month bed tax. There is no way it costs the state $2600/month per bed to inspect nursing homes. So why is the bed tax so high? Because in most cases, the FEDs were paying for it. They created a massive incentive for States to institute high taxes and run up the cost of Medicare to the end users.
2006 TN bed tax
Medicaid bed taxes and institutional bias