On social security

[Horse with no Name]

I am wondering if I missed an important part of it.
What happens to the elderly in the nursing homes who accept their Medicare and Social Security checks as payment for their room and board?

[MichiganVote]

1. Families will pay for them as well

[Horse with no Name]

2. aye aye aye

just shaking head.

[Warpy]

3. They'll hit up the families.

If families are unable or unwilling to pay, then welfare and medicaid will have to pick up the tab.

By the way, social security doesn't cover most nursing home patients. The limit for social security nursing home benefits is reached very quickly. Most elderly in nursing homes have gone through everything they had to leave to spouses or children and are on Medicaid within a couple of years.

In this state, Medicaid kicks in when total assets are $1500. That amount hasn't been raised since the mid 1960s.

[MichiganVote]

4. Right. They can take everything but a person's house.

[demgrrrll]

5. That is true they cannot take your home but if there is no surviving

spouse and the will goes through public probate they can attach the amount that they paid through Medicaid for your care from the proceeds of the sale of your home. This may not be true in every state but I have read letters to the editor in the St. Louis Post
Dispatch from families that were unaware that they were going to lose all or part of the proceeds from the sale of the home.

[Cloister]

6. But they can gift assets

There are limits, but if you know you're likely to be in a nursing home down the road, you can gift assets so that by the time you go into the nursing home, you qualify for aid. This is an extremely common asset planning device.

[demgrrrll]

7. One of the questions on the Medicaid application is have you given

any tangible property away or transferred assets within the last three years. Granted there are legal ways around many things. A trust can help and can avoid probate however many people do not know three years ahead of time whether or not they are going to be in a nursing home. My experience has been that these things happen quickly and there has not been much planning. Some people do plan but many do not.

[MichiganVote]

9. Better to have assets in a trust approx. 5 years before inpatient care

[Yupster]

10. Better to buy long-term care insurance

At age 50 it costs about $ 50 to $ 75 per month depending on the riders you select.

[newyawker99]

12. Hi Cloister!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MichiganVote]

8. Yes this is true.

[LiviaOlivia]

11. I think the Bushits want changes in Medicare-Medicaid long term care

sounds like no long term care under M or M.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61677-2005Feb3.html

~snip~

Leavitt said his goal is to stretch health care dollars further by modernizing the program and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

He and Mark B. McClellan -- head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the federal component of both programs -- implied that the administration hopes to drastically loosen the requirement that states provide long-term care in nursing homes. Keeping the elderly out of nursing homes should result in better health and lower costs, they said.

Currently, states must secure a waiver from McClellan's agency to shift elderly patients to home- or community-based care. Changing that would require action by Congress.