Not everyone on Medicaid or going on Medicaid is in these circumstances. However, my understanding is that because the DeathCare law expands who is eligible for Medicaid, a large number of those newly-eligible are folks with a bit more money and often some assets.
Here is a link to an article about the woman that I cited:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303531204579207724152219590
It makes no mention of property in this article, but I can imagine that many people similarly-situated may have a home or a few assets, and find that they are being forced into Medicaid quite against their will, and for those with a few assets, against their own interests.
Expanded Medicaid eligibility - and forced enrollment - will ensnare more folks into this trap.
sitetest
The White House has repeatedly maintained that ObamaCare expands options, a mantra that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated on Friday. “They’ll have choices they didn’t have in the past, including a range of options when it comes to levels of coverage,” he said.
But those options don’t apply to the millions who will be directed to Medicaid, many of them hardly impoverished.
“The system will automatically sign them up for Medicaid, even if they don’t want to be on Medicaid,” says James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “That’s what’s happening. So a lot of people are getting signed up for Medicaid just by virtue of what their income is.”
A case in point is a Virginia family, who asked to remain anonymous, but who came to Fox News with documents that demonstrate an apparent absurdity with Medicaid selection.
The father owns a $5 million house - entirely paid for. His kids attend expensive private schools. He owns three cars, but because he has earned his fortune and has stopped working , and his wife’s new start-up business has yet to produce an income stream, he is considered by the Healthcare.gov website to have no income.
The website put him on Medicaid. He protested in the website’s chat area. A screen grab of the dialogue reads: “Let 60 minutes show up in front of my 5 million dollars paid for house and tell America that this guy is on {Medicaid} and that the American people are paying {for} it!”
A navigator replied, “I do understand your frustration, however I have no other options to offer.”
There is also strong evidence Medicaid provides substandard care. The Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy wrote in 2012, “Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die as those with private insurance; their hospital stays were 42 percent longer and cost 26 percent more.”