Medicaid Reforms

Medicaid is a means tested health program. One of the common forms of middle class estate planning it to find ways within the rules to qualify older family members of nursing home care provided by Medicaid while preserving as many family assets for the family as possible. Section 6011 of a Senate proposal would tighten the rules to prohibit a number of more obscure methods of conducting this kind of planning.

While this bill seems almost entirely focused on trying to find ways to generate revenues or reduce costs in the Medicaid program, once might hope that this could further strengthen the argument of those like myself who say that once people have been determined to been in need of Medicaid care, that the government should simply provide the care as a grant, rather than making it a loan collected through the United State's death tax for the middle class, which is called the Medicaid estate recovery system, a system that impacts far more families than the estate tax every did, but collects far less revenue.