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.

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.But the bill and accompanying threat weren’t a mistake. LoGrande says that’s how she ended up in a two-year legal battle with Massachusetts after her father died. Several years before he died in 2016, she had turned to a local nonprofit for advice on caring for her elderly father. The group suggested she sign him up for Medicaid. She even remembers asking about the house, but was assured the state would only seek the house if it sent her father to a nursing home.For years, her father got an annual renewal notice from the state’s Medicaid office.

An investigation 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.

As her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s worsened, Mfalme continued to care for her. But in 2015, when Mfalme was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy, she started looking at other options. She hosted a meeting in her mother’s home with the local Medicaid office. The representative told her to drain her mother’s bank accounts – money Mfalme poured into assisted living facility payments for her mom – so her mother would qualify for the program.

“She fought hard for equal pay and equal rights. Just to see that ripped away just because she was sick and I was sick, it’s just absolutely devastating,” Mfalme said of her mother.

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