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Medicaid Recovery Research Paper

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Medicaid Recovery Rules
Following the death of a Medicaid recipient, the program not only can but must attempt to recover costs from the estate of the deceased. Medicaid's official site says:

State Medicaid programs must recover certain Medicaid benefits paid on behalf of a Medicaid enrollee. For individuals age 55 or older, states are required to seek recovery of payments from the individual's estate for nursing facility services, home and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug services.

The National Elder Law Foundation says that life insurance policies with no living beneficiary named may be payable to the Medicaid Applicant’s estate and subject to Medicaid Recovery.

With budgetary pressure mounting, Medicaid …show more content…

If it looks to them like you moved assets or divested yourself of assets specifically to qualify for Medicaid or to hide assets from the program, you can be penalized. This look back period is why you should read up on Medicaid eligibility well before you may need it.

Medicaid Eligibility and Life Insurance
The crux of this question is whether you have term life insurance or whole life insurance. If you have term life, it is not considered a countable asset because it has no cash value.

Term Life
In fact, if you are like most Americans, you may several term life insurance policies. You may not even realize you have them. These are often accidental death policies that only pay if die of an accident. Sometimes, they are more strictly defined, such as "while flying."

These are sometimes in effect for very short terms. For example, if you bought plane tickets using a credit card, the credit card may have automatically provided accidental death benefits solely for the duration of this flight.

For purposes of Medicaid eligibility, you do not need to worry about such policies. They may or may not be impacted in the case of Medicaid recovery after your …show more content…

If you were receive a large life insurance payout while on Medicaid, it could disqualify you from receiving further benefits, at least for a time.

If you have substantial assets, you should be going over these rules well beforehand. Disposing of assets during the look back period in a manner frowned upon by Medicaid can cause you to be heavily penalized.

The penalty will come in the form of being disallowed Medicaid benefits for a set period of time. This time period will be determined by the value of the assets that were "improperly allocated" in the eyes of the many bureaucratic regulations of this joint federal-state program.

This white paper says it best:

"The length of the penalty period is determined by dividing the value of the transferred asset by the average monthly private-pay rate for nursing facility care in the State. Example: A transferred asset worth $90,000, divided by a $3,000 average monthly private-pay rate, results in a 30-month penalty period. There is no limit to the length of the penalty

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