Hello friends,
For years I have been writing about the injustice of families afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease or other dementia who will lose their home if they ask their government for a bit of help. If they won the “Genetic Disease Lottery” they would have gotten a different brain disease, say cancer for example and Medicare would have paid all the bills without one penny demanded in payback. But you know what people say when they hear about Medicaid Estate Recovery? It goes along the line of “If they don’t pay for the help they get, The Taxpayers will have to! Not only does this response reflect on mean and uncaring side of us, it is ignorant. Haven’t they heard about the Good Samaritan? Don’t they understand that if a family has paid for their home, then they are taxpayers and have been for longer than most people have been alive. Consider these points:
The average person in a nursing home for long term care is his or her mid-80s and has a diagnosis of dementia. They need Medicaid to help pay the nursing home. He or she has been a “Taxpayer” for almost 70 years! That means they were paying taxes while the complainers were children receiving “free” school and fire and police protection for their home.
You don’t need to be in a nursing home to run up an enormous Medicaid payback – estate recovery claim. For example the PACE program will provide Medicaid services in your home but the “capitated rate” in Michigan in 2024 can be over $6,000 per month. After 3 years of this in-home assistance your Medicaid Estate Recovery demand will be over $216,000!
Consider Medicare paid treatment for brain cancer. According to a study published on the National Library of Medicine, an average cost of lifetime for this cancer can be over $2,000,000! See Cost of Treatment for Brain Metastases. There is NO payback requirement, even if the person never worked. Medicare Part A can be purchased by a person without a work history aged 65 or over for $505 per month in 2024.
Some of the complainers say the people escape paying for their cost of care by hiring a “sharp attorney.” Why should a taxpayer of some 65 years who has the misfortune of Alzheimer’s Disease have to pay a “sharp attorney” just to save the family home from the government? We have billions to help every “friendly” country on the planet but we don’t have billions to help law abiding lifetime taxpaying families deal with a disease that was not their fault?
Contact your Representatives in Congress and tell them to co-sponsor the Stop Unfair Medicaid Recoveries Act and put an end to this national outrage.