Solution to Long-Term Care: Abandon Your Spouse?
After immigrating to New York City from China in the 1970s, Z. Y. Tung and his wife worked hard — he as a bank manager, she as a public school secretary — lived frugally and saved every penny they could for the next generation.
Until five years ago, when his wife, Wen Mei Hu, racked by bone-marrow cancer, had to be put in a nursing home, where the bills ran past $100,000 a year, threatening to quickly drain the couple’s life savings of $500,000. The nursing home told him not to worry: If he signed a document essentially refusing to support his wife of several decades, Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the indigent, would pick up the bill.
Full article on the tactic of spousal refusal.
Ths is one of those “beam me up” posts. It’s hard to believe.
Thanks for reminding us how loony health policy can be.
One of the costs that couples should save for in retirement is the expense of health care in old age. The couple could have purchased a Long Term Care Partnership Plan if they wanted to shelter some of their assets in the event one needed costly nursing or home care. It is certainly no justification to shaft taxpayers just because the people saved for the future and didn’t want ill-health to impact their savings.
Ah, family values.
Several of my mom’s friends are doing this right now. It’s a really really strange incentive system, and it makes no sense given that the net benefit is to the lawyers who draw up the paperwork.
Two words – Means Testing
If someone wants to pull this scam they should have to submit two previous years of income as part of the Medicaid application process. The couple in the article should have to spend down their wealth before they qualify.
Erik, you’ve become hard hearted, crusty and unfeeling. Is this a personality change?
Ken,
This is fraud. This family had $500,000 in savings that should have been used to care for this man’s spouse not my tax dollars. This family used services meant to help indigent people when they were far from indigent.