Obamacare can seize your assets after you die

[regulator 0]

Tom Gialanella, 56, was shocked to find out he qualified for Medicaid under ObamaCare. The Bothell, Wash., resident had been able to retire early years ago, owns his home outright in a pricey Seattle suburb and is living off his investments.

He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

And after reading the fine print, Gialanella had another reason to flee Medicaid -- the potential death debt.

Though many may not realize it, states are allowed to recover the cost of health care after someone's death by seizing their assets. It applies to Medicaid recipients who are between the ages of 55 and 64. The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses.

But under ObamaCare, Medicaid eligibility has expanded dramatically along with the promise that the federal government will pick up the cost of the higher tab -- at least for the first few years, after which states will be on the hook for a portion of the increase.

Millions more are entering the system, perhaps without knowing that their assets could be at risk.

However, just like Gialanella, others are opting out.

A Washington state couple in their early 60's actually got married recently so their combined income would keep them out of Medicaid and allow them to purchase a plan on the health exchange. Filing as individuals, their incomes had been low enough that they qualified for Medicaid.

They married primarily because Sophia Prins owns a home and wants to will it to her children without any worry that the government will attach a lien for the cost of her medical care. Prins doesn't think it's fair to go after the assets of people who get government assistance through Medicaid, but not those getting taxpayer subsidies through the exchange plans.

The story prompted Washington's Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, to issue an emergency rule change. It says the state may only recover the cost of nursing home care provided to Medicaid recipients in that 55-64 age group. That's the minimum allowable under the 1993 law.

"We have this population that we want to make sure they have access to health care," said state Medicaid Director MaryAnne Lindeblad. "We want them to get in so they can get the kinds of services that keep them healthy."

Oregon followed suit. But the 23 other states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare have not changed their estate recovery policies. A lot of money is at stake.

In 2004, California collected $44.6 million through estate recovery. It's a number that is certain to rise dramatically. MediCal officials tell Fox News they expect 1 million-2 million additional enrollees by 2015.

Minnesota, a much smaller state than California, managed to collect $25 million in 2004. It, too, is keeping its estate recovery policy in place.

Critics see a money grab.

"I think that people are maybe in for a shock when they find out their heirs are going to be paying for their care, because they got into a system under false pretenses," said Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group opposed to the Affordable Care Act.

The estate recovery law is so under the radar right now that interest groups like the AARP are still studying how it will play out under ObamaCare for seniors.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/12/16/fine-print-state-can-seize-your-assets-to-pay-for-care-after-youre-forced-into-medicaid-by-obamacare/

[quade 3]

This isn't an "Obamacare" issue. This is a state issue. Read the article you just posted.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 2,435]

>This isn't an "Obamacare" issue. This is a state issue.

Well, how does that accomplish the goal of slamming Obama, then?

[kallend 1,651]

Quote

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses. "

Yes, clearly Obama was secretly plotting this back in 1993.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[wmw999 2,153]

To be honest, until now, there weren't really any Medicaid recipients who actually had much in the way of assets, so it wasn't an issue.

But anyone to whom you owe money when you die has a claim on your assets. The gummint just comes first as a rule.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[BIGUN 1,079]

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

^This.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[DanG 1]

Quote

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

^This.

What would have been more interesting to report was why was someone with money eligible for Medicare?

- Dan G

[DougH 270]

DanG

Quote

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

^This.

What would have been more interesting to report was why was someone with money eligible for Medicare?

Just thinking out loud, is the means test more income driven than asset driven?

"The restraining order says you're only allowed to touch me in freefall"
=P

[labrys 0]

Quote

What would have been more interesting to report was why was someone with money eligible for Medicare?

You don't have to have "no money" to be eligible for Medicaid, just low income. And someone with low income can still have assets like the house they've lived in for 50 years...

Owned by Remi #?

[Southern_Man 0]

DanG

Quote

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

^This.

What would have been more interesting to report was why was someone with money eligible for Medicare?

Medicaid. But I am very confused about this. Medicare is not resources limited. Medicaid is.

Different states have different eligibility rules but in VA they are pretty low--you can only have $2000 in assets for a single or $3000 for a couple. One car can be excluded and a primary residence can be excluded. Those limits do not change for people with nursing home or other institutional care.

I am not sure what the VA recovery rules are (except I know a little about them in cases of special needs trusts).

I also do not know if/how any of this will change with expanded eligibility. It doesn't seem to have changed yet and when I ask questions nobody seems to know (and I work at a health care facility).

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[Southern_Man 0]

DougH

***

Quote

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

^This.

What would have been more interesting to report was why was someone with money eligible for Medicare?

Just thinking out loud, is the means test more income driven than asset driven?

Medicaid has both income and asset tests. They are state defined and can vary from state to state. Traditionally there is also a need for some sort of categorical eligibility such as disability, pregnancy, children under 18, etc. Being poor was not enough. I don't know if that has changed w/ expanded eligibility.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[bakerjan 0]

kallend

Quote

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses. "

Yes, clearly Obama was secretly plotting this back in 1993.

Not clearly back in 1993, but clearly since 2003, he's been using the legacy systems to ruin the system and impose what works so great in Canada and the UK, if you don't like American health care, "professor," why don't you move to Canada, it already sucks up here, you can get in ahead of the crowd in the US.

Jan

[kallend 1,651]

bakerjan

***

Quote

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses. "

Yes, clearly Obama was secretly plotting this back in 1993.

Not clearly back in 1993, but clearly since 2003, he's been using the legacy systems to ruin the system and impose what works so great in Canada and the UK, if you don't like American health care, "professor," why don't you move to Canada, it already sucks up here, you can get in ahead of the crowd in the US.

Jan

Health care in the US was already a shambles in 1993 and in 2003.

If the US so-called "system" is so superior, how come life expectancy and infant mortality are far better in the UK and Canada (whose systems you appear to despise), while their costs are far lower.

The main beneficiaries of the US system are insurance companies, private health care facilities, and specialists like dermatologists (link provided previously).

Even under the ACA, the insurance companies will be benefiting greatly.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[bakerjan 0]

kallend

******

Quote

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses. "

Yes, clearly Obama was secretly plotting this back in 1993.

Not clearly back in 1993, but clearly since 2003, he's been using the legacy systems to ruin the system and impose what works so great in Canada and the UK, if you don't like American health care, "professor," why don't you move to Canada, it already sucks up here, you can get in ahead of the crowd in the US.

Jan

Health care in the US was already a shambles in 1993 and in 2003.

If the US so-called "system" is so superior, how come life expectancy and infant mortality are far better in the UK and Canada (whose systems you appear to despise), while their costs are far lower.

Cute straw boys,cherry-picking categories and ignoring demographics-obesity basis of the difference, Canada and UK are 87% white, US only 72%, Canada and UK are 23% obese, USA 33%+. Control for those factors, you have your answer. Maybe you should do your homework, "professor".

Quote

The main beneficiaries of the US system are insurance companies, private health care facilities, and specialists like dermatologists (link provided previously).

Even under the ACA, the insurance companies will be benefiting greatly.

Yes, they will LOL and you are one of the ones who elected a corporatist president, what do you expect.

Jan

[freethefly 6]

Not sure why some are all pissed off about demanding that everyone be insured as it is those who are already insured footing the bill for those who are not. Insurance for all will only decrease the cost for us who are insured and help to make hospitals profitable. The ACA, over time, will make it happen.

Those who are dead set against mandatory health insurance should not complain when they have to pay out the ass for an aspirin because the uninsured cannot pay their bill. You get what you ask for.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGEQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aha.org%2Fcontent%2F13%2Fhospbill-explain.pdf&ei=De3iUr3CEqPLsASp4IKABA&usg=AFQjCNEWtwrNuMLhotEO-npRQN1CnjKY4g&bvm=bv.59930103,d.cWc&cad=rja

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[quade 3]

BIGUN

>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.
^This.

This is still a STATE issue. It has nothing to do with the Federal government and "Obamacare."

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[BIGUN 1,079]

quade

***>>>>>>>He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.
^This.

This is still a STATE issue. It has nothing to do with the Federal government and "Obamacare."

FROM THE ARTICLE

Before the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, there weren’t that many people in Medicaid who had much in the way of assets for seizing. But now that Medicaid enrollment requirements have been relaxed, more people with assets but low income are joining the program or being forced into it. For instance, a couple in their 50s who, say, retired early after losing jobs in the bad economy may have assets but show a very low income. Under Obamacare, if their income is low enough to qualify for Medicaid, they must enroll in Medicaid unless they want to buy totally unsubsidized coverage in the now-inflated individual market.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[kallend 1,651]

From the article:

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses."

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[BIGUN 1,079]

kallend

From the article:

"The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses."

I'm not sure which article you're reading, but this quote is not from the OP's article posting.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[GeorgiaDon 340]

Regulator clearly copied-and-pasted from some article in his post at the start of the thread. The 1993 quote is in there. The article Regulator linked is not the article he copied in his post.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[BIGUN 1,079]

GeorgiaDon

Regulator clearly copied-and-pasted from some article in his post at the start of the thread. The 1993 quote is in there. The article Regulator linked is not the article he copied in his post.

Don

My apologies, Professor.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[GeorgiaDon 340]

Quote

since 2003, he's been using the legacy systems to ruin the system

I was unaware that Obama was president in 2003. If, on the other hand, he was a private citizen who held the opinion that the US system was doing a poor job, well he was far from alone in that opinion. Perhaps you disapprove of private citizens being allowed to voice their opinion?

Quote

... if you don't like American health care, "professor," why don't you move to Canada, it already sucks up here

I experienced the Canadian health care system in Canada (Ontario and BC) for the first 39 years of my life, as a single person and as a parent of young children. Since then I have experienced the US system from the perspective of the parent buying family coverage on a very limited income, as well as from the perspective of a member of what is considered a very good group plan. I never had any problems with timely access to medical care in Canada. I could always get a same-day appointment, even on a Saturday, when I or my kids were sick. On the other hand, when I belonged to a HMO in Arizona I invariably had to fight to get an appointment, and always had to wait days to get to see my primary care doctor. On one occasion my wife broke her ankle, and the HMO would not approve even an X-ray until our primary care doctor returned from his vacation in 10 days. I took her to the hospital anyway, the x-ray confirmed the fracture, and the bone was set correctly and casted. Had I waited the 10 days the bone would have started to heal incorrectly, and would have had to be rebroken, trimmed to remove the new growth, then set and immobilized, a much more invasive process that would have risked permanent injury. I then had to fight with the HMO for almost a year to have them cover the treatment.

My next door neighbor, a carpenter, had coverage under a different HMO. He cut his hand and nicked a tendon. Repair immediately would have involved stitching the tendon and the cut. He could not get an appointment for several days, and in the meantime the tendon tore the rest of the way through. What should have been a simple process turned into a major injury that required cutting open his hand to find the ends of the tendon, surgery to repair the tendon, and three months unpaid off work for the injury to heal.

My experience is that as a full-time student with two kids and a pretty minimal family income, my access to health care in Canada was every bit as good as my present access to US health care as the beneficiary of a group plan heavily subsidized by my employer.

Quote

"professor,"

What's up with the quotation marks? Are you disputing that Kallend is indeed an engineering professor? On what basis do you question that?

Your new avatar does fit your "personality" better. Though I thought the mug shot was pretty appropriate too.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[kallend 1,651]

It would appear that you don't believe control of diet, and therefore obesity and type II diabetes, have anything to do with health care.

Well, it does. And the USA "system" has done a shitty job of dealing with it.

Thank you for pointing out that the UK and Canada have health care systems with a better handle on the problem.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[champu 1]

...so a new law is interacting with an old law in a way that might cause new problems for some people. I'm not sure of the point in drawing attention to how old the old law is. If you were on medication A for 20 years and a doctor comes in, sees you're on medication A, adds medication B, and you die because medication A and B don't play well together, how long you had been on medication A (or who prescribed it) is irrelevant.

Alternate analogy I also like, "So what if I threw the guy off the Golden Gate Bridge? That thing has been around since the '30s!"

That all being said, is the scope of the issue overstated and is the title of this thread alarmist and silly? Absolutely on both counts.

[chutem 0]

kallend

It would appear that you don't believe control of diet, and therefore obesity and type II diabetes, have anything to do with health care.

Those appear to be personal choice issues to me. How do you propose that our health care system "control" these issues?