State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

FILE - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building is seen, April 5, 2009, in Washington. The federal government requires every state to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid for long-term care. Now, critics want the federal government to stop doing that because, they say, the program collects a bit of money from the poorest people.

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.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.

New York and Ohio topped the country for such collections, recovering more than $100 million combined in a single year,into the Kansas program, released Tuesday by the Health and Human Services inspector general, found that program was cost effective — yielding $37 million while only spending $5 million to recover the money, But the state didn't always collect the money from estates that were eligible.

In Tennessee, which recovered more than $38.2 million from more than 8,100 estates last year, Imani Mfalme found herself in a similar predicament after her mother’s death in 2021. Now, Tennessee's Medicaid office says she owes $225,000 and the state is seeking a court order that would require Mfalme to sell the house to pay up.

The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission's report recommended that Congress reverse the 1993 law that required states to recover money from estates, instead making it optional.. Schakowsky believes the rule is a losing proposition for families, who give up their homes, and taxpayers, who don't see big returns from the recovery efforts.

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