Planning for Life

By Harry S. Margolis

System Failures in the United States

The coronavirus pandemic and murder of George Floyd have laid bare the failures of public health and policing in the United States. Those failures are not news. We've known that we spend much more per capita on health care than any other nation with uneven results and a system where a health event can bankrupt a family.

The MassHealth Board of Hearings ruled in favor of Attorney Sarah Hartline’s client last week in a case involving a transfer of assets from a nursing home resident to her son and a question of whether the transfer was done with the intent to qualify for MassHealth benefits, which would result in a significant disqualification period.

With so much at stake, planning — and paying — for long-term care services such as assisted living or nursing home stays can be a confusing and anxiety-ridden process. Medicaid (known as MassHealth in Massachusetts) provides coverage for long-term care costs, including comprehensive coverage for skilled nursing home care and supplemental coverage for the cost of assisted living and home health care, but there are some common misconceptions about what MassHeath does and does not cover and who is eligible.

By Harry S. Margolis

In his most recent personal finance column, New York Times reporter Ron Lieber addresses "The Ethics of Adjusting Your Assets to Qualify for Medicaid." As Lieber explains in this and prior articles, Medicaid has become the primary source of payment for long-term care services in the United States. But it is essentially a health care program for the poor and has set asset, and sometimes income, limits for determining if someone is poor enough to qualify for benefits.

By Harry S. Margolis

I generally try to avoid politics in my blog posts, but sometimes politics invade my field of long-term care planning. At this writing, the Republican leadership in the Senate is crafting its own version of Obamacare repeal. We don't know what it will look like, and we probably won't know when it's voted on, since Senator Mitch McConnell says his plan is to release it and call a vote before the end of next week.