Why is it always a goal to put aging loved ones on Medicaid?

I don't think it's. a goal to be on Medicaid for most people. If you have money, you have choices. The best nursing homes in my area will accept Medicaid but to get in you'd better show them $300k to $400k in assets- and the house doesn't count. Their Medicaid beds are for the residents who already spent the 100s of thousands of dollars renting a room.

People act like families investigating Medicaid are all gaming the system. Most people are just trying to responsibly manage their parents' estate- in my opinion. You really can't fault them for investigating the rules and acting according to them.

You've asked a very good question. The only reason to move assets is to hide them from Medicaid. The aging person does not benefit in anyway - the heirs do. I agree with you. They saved all their life for old age. Use it to pay for the best care you can get until it runs out. Then, use the Medicaid that is intended for people at or below the poverty limit. While money is available, why not pay for the best care you can afford? It belongs to the person needing the care.

I worked in welfare programs and retired with a state agency. With politics being front and center these days and comments being made about people wanting something for nothing - some of those same people forget (I sure didn't) that they called me at one time to ask "How do I hide my parent's money, property, house, etc" Or, what should I put on this application for a Medicaid nursing home bed about my mom's savings account". My answer was always the same - you tell the truth because once you use up her money, she will be eligible for the Medicaid bed. There was no way I was going to give advice to circumvent the system and lose my job. So what it comes down to, politically, is that there are some people who detest the thought that someone might get something for free UNLESS they are the recipient. Then the story is 'I worked all my life and paid taxes" No, you didn't earn a penny of your mom's money - she did. You just want to get your hands on something you did not earn.

My job was always a joke at a gathering of family/friends/etc. Someone had to mention what a welfare recipient looks like, however they would never identify their own Medicaid mom as being what a welfare recipient looks like. --They told me about all the cadillacs parked in our parking lot. 1)The car might have belonged to a working employee 2)large, older gas guzzling cars have been cheap to buy for years. 3) i work there and have yet to see a parking lot full of cadillacs. --Then there was the Food Stamps and depending on what race the person was who was talking, an opposite race would be mentioned saying it was all that particular color getting welfare. I got denied because I'm white, black, brown, etc. NOT. The rules are the same regardless of color. You're either eligible or not. -- And always knew someone getting thousands of dollars from welfare. Don't think so. People survive on welfare, they don't create huge savings accounts. And I happen to know the maximum amts for each program. Yes, a few cheat (and I worked in investigations) - but I saw far more people who could afford medical care/facility care for an aging parent trying to hide assets than I did cheating Food Stamp recipients. Some of them got away with it because they were lucky enough to move the money prior to the 5 year look back period.

I actually overheard a lady whose mom was in the nursing home having a conversation with her friend. The friend asked how much it cost a month to be in a nursing home. The woman replied, we don't pay anything. I made my mom destitute so she would get a free Medicaid bed. We moved all her money over 5 years ago while she was still living at home. I thought to myself - what a wonderful daughter you are to make your own mother a pauper.

I don’t think it’s anyone’s goal. In the many cases like mine my mom doesn’t have the financial means to pay $8-10K per month for Alzheimer’s care. I’ve taken care of her for 6.5 years but now physically and even emotionally it’s more than I can handle. So therefore I’m trying to get her Medicaid. Hope this helps.

Medicaid was never a plan!
My parents had money & a big CA house near the beach. Then dad got cancer & they spent all savings/reverse mortgage to pay for his non-helpful chemo then experimental drugs. Poverty & dementia hit my mommy hard as soon as dad's funeral was done.

Moved her in with me, her only child, until while I'm at work, she walked into highway traffic thinking she was "crossing" her childhood street. Again.

With my own health, job, & finances in tatters to juggle care for her at home, I relented to Medicaid for mommy's 24 hour memory care because there's no personal money left. Awful. Heartbreaking. With COVID I can never kiss or hug her. But, she is safe now & is "ok" with her routine. I'm thankful for Medicaid for my mommy's protection & care.

Medicaid was NEVER the plan. It's a safety net.

It's one thing for a person to use their assets to pay for their care in old age if it was fairly priced, but it's not. A regular middle-class senior who may have worked their whole life, sacrificed, and made good financial decisions because they want to leave something behind for their family should be able to. A middle-class person's entire life savings and property is gone in a few months when they have to go into a nursing home. Eventually pretty much everyone in a nursing home ends up on Medicaid unless they had long-term care insurance (which most people can't afford to pay the premiums on), or they're independently wealthy. Middle class people are finally catching onto what rich people have always done. Rich people put their property and assets into trusts for their families so the wealth and assets can be passed down. Then they get everything paid for when they're old. Why do middle class elderly who worked and saved their whole life have to be the ones that set the example of financial honesty when far wealthier then themselves protect their money and get it for free? Years ago, I worked in an AL facility that was very nice. We had a resident who owned property and land which was valued at around 10 million. It was put into trust for her family and they also got a special break because the state considered it farmland. It had been a farm 50 years before. One of her daughters who was rich as King Midas had a little, quaint vanity business selling flowering plants she grew in a greenhouse on the property. Mom's bill for her homecare then AL was paid for by the state and Medicaid. So, I say more power to the little guy who can hold onto a few bucks that the nursing home racket can't get its greedy hands on.

I paid within a few hundred do;Lars of a million to care for my mother, over about 5 1/2 years’ time, in the best nursing home setting I could find.

It was her money, my father had made it, and that’s what he would have wanted.

Had she lived much longer, she would have gone on Medicaid after all of her assets were expended.

I never regretted handling the situation as I did.

This topic has prompted me to post my first comments on this site after silently following the posts for several months. First of all, I've found many of the questions and answers very helpful, so I'm very thankful this forum is here and that people take the time to offer answers and support! I hesitate to participate though, because with the way I've been handling things, I know I might tend to go off on long, negative rants.

I had similar experiences to many of the others who posted here. I went to an EC attorney 5 years ago with legitimate questions when my LO first became ill. Questions such as what can and can't I do as POA when LO doesn't recognize he needs help and isn't cooperative, how do I keep appropriate records, etc. Attorney automatically assumes I'm there for a consult about getting LO on Medicaid. Of course I was very new to all of this at the time, didn't know which way was up, so I didn't assert myself and say that that's not why I was there. The whole appt focused on how to shift assets to get on Medicaid, and at the end of the appt, atty told me she'd handle the application for $15,000! I'll skip a lot of details, and just say that I decided to not go that route.

At this point, LO's funds are paying for about 50 hrs/week of in-home care. It's extremely expensive, and funds are dwindling. Not to mention that I have to micro-manage the agency providing the care givers if I want it to go well. The owner actually told me that they don't guarantee to send someone for the scheduled shift. Of course, he told me this after several "no shows" rather than telling me this little detail when he was trying to sell me his service. Of course, I hadn't asked when I was signing the contract.

I'm in danger of going off on a rant here, so I'm going to try to get to my point -- if I even have one. Getting old in this country is ridiculously expensive, and most people don't know or care about this until they are in this position. I know I sure didn't. For the average person who is now working and saving for retirement, he/she can expect to pay at least 2 times more than his/her total yearly salary to pay for one year of care as a senior. How does that make sense??? You're no longer working, and you're paying out more to live than you ever made in a year while working. And, with today's medicines and medical care, this can go on for years!

I have no problems using LO's money for LO's care. It's their money. When it runs out, I'll apply for Medicaid for them. But, something has to be done in this country to make care more affordable for the middle class. We talk a lot about how expensive it is for child care -- which it is -- but from my experience, we don't talk much about the HUGE expense of elder care. (So parents, just when you thought you made it through the financial crunch of child-care, housing, and college expenses, get ready to pay that much and more for elder care!)

Going through all of this with LO has opened my eyes and made me take steps to plan my retirement/life. I believe in paying my own way, but when I need care, there is no way I'm paying more to be taken care of for a year while retired than I ever made in a year when I was working.

It’s very true that a person’s assets should be used to pay for their needs and care. Also true that Medicaid is a government program that helps people who can’t afford to pay for care. I personally don’t believe in inheritance at the expense of public funds, to me that’s misuse. Others see it differently. In our family, my mother’s care post stroke quickly burned through what we thought was an excellent long term care policy, private pay wasn’t sustainable for the long term, and Medicaid was done to avoid bankruptcy for my dad. When you consider years of nursing home care at over $140 a day it doesn’t take long to break a person. My mother’s SS always went toward her care, but the rest simply become too much

You are correct, her money should be used to provide her with the best possible quality of life.

Many people are looking for ways to hustle the system and get a fat inheritance while their parents are put in a nursing home and many times just forgotten.

I can't personally imagine worrying about getting the house I want and was promised if it meant that my loved one had to go on welfare for me to receive it. But it takes all kinds to make the world go round.

Because your mom has a disabled dependent adult child I highly recommend that you go to www.nelf.org and find a certified elder law attorney in your area and have them help you. He needs to be protected as much as mom, they will be able to help you ensure that he is taken care of in the event that mom no longer can.

I was cheering your post, hustling the system is a hot button for me. I have seen people that needed the aid and could not qualify while others that didn't need it shielded their assets to qualify. The lack of integrity that takes is gut wrenching and the ones that suffer are the ones that didn't have anything to hide.

God bless you on your journey, may you find a great attorney and be filled with strength and wisdom.

I went through this issue with my mom the last year before she died. My mom had funds that were quickly being spent down for in-home care and I faced the prospect of her going into a care home and eventually qualifying for Medicaid. She died before she went into a facility, so it all became a nonissue. However, I believe that a person's funds should be used to pay for their care, not to fund children's inheritance. I am heartened by the replies here that advocate that position. I talked with a Medicaid attorney while doing my research and asked why I would want to pay him to work toward speeding up the process to get my mom qualified. When he said, "to protect her assets for you", that was it. I was out of there. Again, my personal view, but government funds are supposed to be used to help the needy, not the greedy.