Bill in Congress to Restrict Medicaid to Really Needy

Congressman Charles W. Boustany, Jr., MD (R, LA) introduced the Medicaid Long-Term Care Reform Act of 2012 (H.R. 6300) on August 2, 2012.  This legislation advances the cause of responsible LTC planning and rational LTC public policy. 

The short description of H.R. 6300 and the full text can be found on http://thomas.loc.gov.  This bill may not pass, but others like it will be coming down the pike.  Medicaid simply cannot pay for all the coming baby boomers LTC expenses.  A few of its major features follow: 

Changing of the lookback period for divestments prior to qualifying for Medicaid from 5 to 10 years.  It also calls for reducing the maximum home equity for the “at home” spouse from $788,000 to $200,000 or $50,000.   Block granting of Medicaid (to stop the abuses) is also called for.

People who wish to protect their nest eggs will be encouraged to investigate LTC insurance.  The Partnership program which encourages this will be expanded as well.  Right now governors are being queried as to their input on this bill. 

What does this mean to me?

The upshot of all this is that Medicaid canot take care of everyone’s LTC expenses and the federal government realizes this and IS making changes.   If LTC insurance is of interest to you, bear in mind you can only get it while you are still healthy enough to qualify for the underwriting. 

Call TheLongTermCareGuy.com at 920 884-3030 to schedule a time to investigate this for your situation.

Please follow and like us:
fb-share-icon

3 Comments

  1. Shawn Schroeder on October 25, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    It is my hope that once we have a new administration sworn in on 1/19/13, that DC can come together and take our deficit seriously and reform our entitlements and safety nets like Medicaid…or its goodbye yellow brick road and hello Greek ruins.



  2. induction cooktop how it works on February 10, 2014 at 8:49 pm

    There is clearly a lot to realize about this. I consider
    you made some nice points in features also.



  3. stylish on February 19, 2014 at 7:19 am

    I’m impressed, I must say. Actually rarely do I encounter a
    weblog that’s both educative and entertaining,
    and let me let you know, you will have hit the nail on the head.

    Your thought is outstanding; the problem is one thing that not
    sufficient people are talking intelligently about.
    I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.