State Medicaid offices target dead people's homes to recoup their health care costs

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https://apnews.com/article/medicaid-estate-recovery-nursing-homes-65d5e637e19dc27bd1bd3b097d239b53

State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs
By AMANDA SEITZ
Updated 3:18 PM CDT, March 16, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago.

So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue for his home if she didn’t pay up quickly.

“The home was everything,” to her father said LoGrande, 57.

But the bill and accompanying threat weren’t a mistake.

Rather, it was part of a routine process the federal government requires of every state: to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance for the poorest Americans.

A person’s home is typically exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. But it is subject to the estate recovery process for those who were over 55 and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care such as nursing home stays or in-home health care.

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