Show #256 Airing Sunday, May 16, 2004
A story in the news several weeks ago really troubled me. I’m going to share it with you now and you may find it disturbing too.
An elderly woman had just returned home from the hospital after heart surgery. When she opened her mail, she found a letter that could have caused a healthy person to have heart failure. It was an official letter from the Ohio Attorney General informing her that she might owe $131,000 for her dead sister’s Medicaid benefits.
Her sister had died penniless in a nursing home. Medicaid had paid the bills. Now Medicaid wanted the money back.
This news story bothered me for several reasons. First; the State cannot force siblings, children, or other family members to pay another person’s nursing home bills. There is a law, called estate recovery, that allows Ohio to try to get reimbursed for paid-out Medicaid benefits when a person dies. But the law only lets the State go after the estate of the person who actually received the benefits, not other family members.
I’ve seen the letters sent out by the Attorney General’s Office. They are intimidating and misleading. If you didn’t know the rules, you might think that you actually owed the State money for a family member’s Medicaid bill.
Second; the State can only go after the probate estate of a past Medicaid recipient. Let’s say a person in a nursing home on Medicaid died with a small savings account. If the account was just in the nursing home patient’s name alone, it would be a probate asset and the State could grab it. But if the account was joint with a child, or named a child as the POD beneficiary, then the account would not be a probate asset, and the State would have no right to the money.
Now if the State sent a letter asking about a deceased Medicaid recipient’s probate assets, that would be lawful. In fact, no letter is even needed. The State can check the county Probate Court for a deceased person’s probate assets because it would all be public record.
But the State has been sending letters to the family of deceased Medicaid recipients asking about non- probate assets, like life insurance, trust funds and IRAs. The only reason I can think of to ask about non-probate assets is to try to trick the heirs into turning money over to the State that the State has no right to receive.
And I’ll tell you what really makes this repugnant mess worse. The Ohio Attorney General’s office is beginning to hire private attorneys to go after Medicaid collections. These lawyers get a percentage of whatever they bring in. They don’t get paid a penny if they don’t collect. This procedure enhances the risk that lawyers will become overly aggressive trying to collect monies, even if it means bending or breaking, the rules.
So if you get an official looking letter from the Ohio Attorney General after a loved one who received Medicaid dies, here’s what to do:
Write the Attorney General’s office and tell them that you have no personal obligation to pay, and that your deceased relative had no probate estate, if that’s the case.
If an aggressive attorney continues to harass you, contact an experienced elder law attorney for help.
I know the State of Ohio is having budget problems. But trying to intimidate folks who have no personal liability is a heck of a way for Ohio’s chief lawyer to do business, don’t you think?
