“One Woman’s Slide From Middle Class to Medicaid,” by Ron Lieber, New York Times

“A dozen or so years into retirement, Rita Sherman had plenty going for her financially. Recently widowed, she had a net worth of roughly $600,000 as of 1998. Her health was excellent, and she dutifully purchased a long-term care insurance policy that would cover three years of nursing home costs should she ever need help. Watching over it all was her daughter, a medical social worker, and her son-in-law, a financial planner. By the time she died at the age of 94 last year, however, all of the money was gone after a diagnosis of dementia and five and a half years in a nursing home. Like so many people who never see it coming, she’d gone from being financially comfortable to qualifying for Medicaid.”

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):
This is a common, tragic story, but it doesn’t mean what the New York Times says it means. Is navigating LTC complicated? Yes, but blame no one but public policy, especially Medicaid which distorted the services and financing market, created most of the complexity, and desensitized the public to LTC risk and cost. The woman in this story had LTC insurance, but only three years. She tried to set up a Medicaid planning trust to preserve her wealth after the LTCI ran out by getting the government to pay for her care, but her elder law attorney bungled the job. She ended up on Medicaid anyhow, but after spending down her wealth for care . . . making her an exception to the more common outcome in which the Medicaid planning succeeds leaving taxpayers with the bill.

One Woman’s Slide From Middle Class to Medicaid

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#medicaid