Senior Planning Services
provides estate preservation from Medicaid /
nursing home spend down. You don't have to spend
your life savings paying for nursing home costs.
If you are responsible for the management of the
assets of someone who is currently in a nursing
facility or about to enter into a nursing
facility, the following information is vital to
that person’s financial health.
Today, one of the most stressful problems facing
senior citizens who enter nursing homes is the
loss of their life savings by paying for their
cost of care while in the nursing home.
An alternate source of funding for nursing home
costs could possibly be the nursing home
Medicaid program.
When entering a nursing home you have two
options. The first option is a total spend down
of your life savings on nursing home costs. The
second option is to be able to preserve a
substantial amount of your life savings, while
at the same time qualifying for Medicaid
benefits.
If you know the guidelines and how to apply
them, you will find that in most cases you are
not required to spend all your money, but can
actually preserve a large part of it.
There is a large information gap for families on
how to access long-term nursing care benefits
under the Medicaid program and avoid unnecessary
spend down of resources.
At one end of the information spectrum are the
social workers, discharge planners and admission
directors who focus on solutions to medical and
nursing care treatment.
At the other end is the Texas Department of
Human Services, a dedicated group of Medicaid
workers. It’s their job to process applications
and to approve or reject applicants for
benefits.
As a result of this information gap, people are
not able to get all of the information they need
to make an informed decision about the issues
concerning long-term care planning and the
preservation of their estate as the guidelines
might afford them. |
There are many myths about Medicaid, mainly
being that it is a welfare or poverty program.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In
fact, “when a stay-at-home spouse can keep up to
$2,841.00 of the total monthly income and up to
$113,640 of the total family assets (in some
cases, the stay-at-home spouse is allowed to
keep all of the total family assets) it’s
difficult to see it as a poverty program.”
Spending all of your
money on nursing facility costs when you don’t
have to is bad enough. Now in Texas, an
estate recovery law enables the state to
file a claim on homesteads and other property to
recover nursing facility costs incurred by the
state (some exceptions do apply). Previously in
the state of Texas, homesteads were considered
an exempt asset and the estate recovery law did
not exist.
Proper planning to protect homesteads and other
property from estate recovery is now an
important part of nursing home financial
planning. This type of planning requires someone
with specialized knowledge of the ever-changing
long-term care rules and regulations. |
