Long Term Care Insurance’s Role in Medicaid Planning
Many seniors will be faced with the need for long-term care. The costs of long-term care can be devastating to the spouse living at home, depleting the savings accumulated over a lifetime in just a few years. Medicare only fully covers 20 days of skilled nursing care after a three day stay in a hospital. After the first 20 days, Medicare pays only a small part of the skilled nursing bill for another 80 days. Medicare pays for hospice services such as counseling and pain management medications, but not for hospice room and board. As you can see, Medicare benefits run out quickly, resulting in a shift to Medicaid. However, Medicaid limits how much one can keep and still qualify for benefits. Because Medicaid is a program to provide health care to the poor, one must be poor to qualify.
This is where it is important to know long term care insurance’s role in Medicaid planning. If one obtains an ordinary long-term care insurance policy, the recipient can have no more than $1,500 in assets when he or she wants Medicaid benefits to begin. This type of policy can protect gifts made prior to the applicable look-back period.
However, an Ohio Long-Term Care Partnership Policy does more than simply protect the look-back period. The benefits received from a Partnership Policy protects a matching amount of assets if you continue to need long term care and apply for Medicaid. In other words, for every dollar you use in benefits, another dollar of your assets is protected when you apply for Medicaid. If your policy paid out $300,000 in benefits, you protect $300,000 in assets from Medicaid, in addition to the $1,500 in assets that you are always allowed to keep.
If you would like to learn more about estate planning and probate, check out my other articles on those topics: pitfalls of using online legal services to draft your will, even online document services recommend that you use a local attorney, Medicaid and long term care, Medicaid guidelines for long term care in 2015, how a will is made in Ohio, and death taxes in Ohio. Even more information is located on my estate planning and probate pages.
Attorney Gigiano is a Medina County estate planning attorney in Wadsworth, where he has prepared estate planning and advanced directive documents for numerous clients, including wills, powers of attorney, and living wills. As a general practice attorney, he often drafts such documents for clients who have previously used his services for other matters. While Attorney Gigiano helps his clients understand the role insurance can have on estate planning, he does not sell insurance. The work he has done for his clients has earned him positive Daniel Gigiano Reviews, reviews found in a number of websites, and articles and links to his work. If you have questions about this or other questions you need answered by an experienced Barberton estate planning attorney near Doylestown, Ohio or Orrville estate planning lawyer near Rittman, please call Attorney Daniel F. Gigiano at 330-336-3330.
