There May Be Hope For Individuals Entering The Louisiana Nursing Home With Assets

On October 14, 2010, at 4:05pm, I received an email from the Louisiana Medicaid Eligibility Policy Unit. It stated that the Louisiana Medicaid Eligibility Manual was clarified.

For the past several months I had thought that the Medicaid office was applying our laws incorrectly. It appears though with this clarification I was right all along. I applaud the State for clarifying this uncertainty.

It all has to do with what happens when a person makes a transfer and then part of the transferred resources are returned. The bottom line is that the penalty period that started does not stop, and that the penalty period can be reduced by the return of transferred resources. The following is the example given straight from the Medicaid Eligibility Manual:

"Applicant for LTC is determined eligible for Medicaid on October 1, 2008. However, a transfer of property valued at $70,453.00 occurred on September 1, 2008. A transfer of resource penalty was applied and the applicant was ineligible for vendor payment for 17 months and 18 days beginning October 1, 2008. On September 01, 2009, it was reported that $23,000.00 of resources were returned to the individual in August, 2009. The returned resources were used to pay the facility fee and his countable resources were below the resource limit as of September 1, 2009. ** The penalty period should be recalculated using the un-refunded portion of the $47,453 of the uncompensated transfer. ** The re-calculated penalty period of 11 months and 26 days begins September 1, 2008 with vendor payment beginning September 27, 2009."

What does all this mean? It means there is hope for people who are either in the nursing home with liquid financial resources, or are on the doorstep of the nursing home with financial resources. The way the math usually works out, we can typically help a family save about half of their life savings.

Come see us five years prior to entering the nursing home and we can likely save the whole kit and kaboodle.

Of course every set of circumstances is different, and we won't know what you can protect until you come in to any one of our three offices in Louisiana for your no-cost initial visit. Find us in Baton Rouge, Mandeville or New Orleans. We have attorneys full-time in all three areas who are committed to helping families like yours sort through rules like this. Don't try this at home!

Paul Rabalais

Comments

[ugg sale]

I applaud the State for clarifying this uncertainty.

[Retro Jordan]

*People enjoy the characters are not happy.

[air max shoes]

No one without contempt, to endure and struggle to conquer fate.

[J. J. LaPlace]

Is this still the law in 2012?

[Angelo]

Do you mean after the person dies? No, when a nsruing home accepts Medicaid patient, it agrees to accept the patient's social security as their payment in full and Medicaid paid the balance. They have no legal right to levy the estate to recoup anything since Medicaid has already reimbursed them.

[Parshad]

"why didn't you do 'this' or 'that'. So, the system made drootcs become this way. And, of course, most drootcs send those people to the hospital for the tests.See, the problem is that the government sees one thing and goes after that one thing religiously, without thinking about other consequences or other things that possibly should be done. I've been saying for years that there needs to be a cap on malpractice suits of some kind, which might lower malpractice insurance and bring more drootcs into fields where we have a drastic shortage, like OB drootcs. There are some bad drootcs out there, just like there are some hospitals doing some illegal stuff, but it's not the majority.