News

23301 readers

3521 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

190

State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs (apnews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago.

So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue for his home if she didn’t pay up quickly.

“The home was everything,” to her father said LoGrande, 57.

But the bill and accompanying threat weren’t a mistake.

Rather, it was part of a routine process the federal government requires of every state: to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance for the poorest Americans.

A person’s home is typically exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. But it is subject to the estate recovery process for those who were over 55 and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care such as nursing home stays or in-home health care.

This month, a Democratic lawmaker proposed scuttling the “cruel” program altogether. Critics argue the program collects too little — roughly 1% — of the more than $150 billion Medicaid spends yearly on long-term care. They also say many states fail to warn people who sign up for Medicaid that big bills and claims to their property might await their families once they die.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's commonly got around too by those with the resources by switching the assets into a trust or in another person's name a few years before they need the long-term care. Literally only penalizes the most vulnerable. NYS long-term care is so stupid expensive because they privatized it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I'm really at a loss for why the American public hasn't started nationalizing shit. Everyone seems so mad at everything but the real problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because our government is totally incompetent at every thing its runs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This is objectively false.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Because our public education system has been gutted and the 4th estate has become something of a joke so good luck holding anyone accountable even if you are educated enough to realize what's going on: This is by design to help the people in power try to keep their power and obscene wealth.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

With health coverage being tied to employment, and employment taking up every shred of energy from large swaths of the population due to very low wages and long hours (a solid chunk of said wages go directly to health coverage, and many people work a bunch of overtime or a second job just to get by), I’m not really sure how people would, by and large, have an opportunity to really do anything about it.

Like yeah, everyone hates it and wants it to change, but if you take time to protest (even if you cover it with pto), you may lose your job for the effort, even if they just find out you went or whatever. It’s not protected action, employment-wise (thanks, union busting). And any other support for it also needs a lot of time and energy..

Basically employers have set it up this way to strap us over a barrel. It’s all intentional to take away our ability to really do anything about it. Keep us slaving, cuz the alternative might just be death.

Sadly I think it’ll need to be even worse before we see large scale risk taking by the population… when you have nothing left to lose you fear no loss.. until then you try to survive best you can.