Long-term care costs for the elderly are not cheap. This is the reason many people apply for Medicaid coverage to cover such costs. But applying for coverage is a complex process. Your income must be near or over the state’s financial eligibility limits to be eligible. And there are other requirements to meet to be qualified. This makes it important to consult with a skilled medicaid planning lawyer at scottcounsel.com before you apply. Your attorney can help you make sure you fill out your application documents correctly. Also, they can suggest ways to increase the chances of your application being approved.
What is Medicaid?
Medicaid provides financial assistance to citizens who have low incomes or disabilities. Individuals who are at least 65 years old qualify for Medicaid benefits that can pay for some medical expenses. Medicaid benefits include nursing home care, transportation to medical care, home health services, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, and more. If you plan to use Medicaid for paying for nursing home expenses, ensure your chosen facility accepts this coverage.
Should You Care About Medicare Eligibility?
This is a good question, and one you should ask yourself, or in this case, maybe even seek professional help. From our standpoint, it is! Trust us when we tell you this. Being eligible for Medicare is quite vital, especially for your quality of life. It is a staggering fact just how many people entirely ignore the fact of whether they are eligible or not. The importance of eligibility, in this case, can’t be stressed enough. For one, it is vital for every person because the fact it covers the difference between what a nursing home costs and what you have set aside as your retirement plan.
If you’re not aware, a room in a nursing home is not exactly cheap by any standard. The matters could even escalate further in this department if you haven’t given any idea to long-time insurance on time or even at all. So, once you find yourself in need of a nursing home, you might find yourself poking into your retirement fund quite often. Because of this, being eligible for Medicare is vital for many of us, and during your lifetime you need to make sure that you cover all the dots so that there isn’t any inconvenience when the time is due that you need proper care.
How to Qualify?
This is where things can get complicated, but they don’t have to be. It’s important that you know at least the basics. You’ll be denied it if you have a high income or any type of highly valued financial asset. But, this doesn’t mean that you are not eligible. Some assets are removed from the Medicare exempt list. For example, if you have a spouse, you are allowed to have assets even if you are moving to a nursing home. The reasoning is simple – those assets are still reserved and needed for your spouse. If you have a prettier half by your side you can own a house that is worth up to $840k, no more than one car, prepaid funeral expenses, other resources that are neither lower than $75k nor higher than $120k, and monthly income which is directed towards your spouse.
Of course, this is all great in the case you have a spouse. But, if you’re single the conditions are different and measured accordingly to your condition as a single person. You’ll be allowed to have assets up to $15k and still be eligible for Medicare. But, in this case, your home is no longer on the exempt list as you will not be needing it. Furthermore, other assets will also take you off their acceptance list. Now that you know all of this, you see how planning in this domain is important. But, if you’re still not getting the full extent of what we said, we’re going to add further conviction to what we said in the paragraph below. So, please, keep reading.
Importance of Medical Planning
Medicaid planning ensures you can cover nursing costs without spending all your assets down. It can protect your assets from the possible impact of long-term care on your finances. Long-term care expenses can be quite expansive. And a person who belongs to the middle or upper class may have saved money their whole life and think they can afford whatever life events they have to suffer from. However, things can easily change when these people suffer from a condition that requires long-term care such as a stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, heart attack, and Parkinson’s disease. With these conditions, they would need someone to help them with activities of daily living. When these conditions leave them incurring a six-figure expense per year, they could lose what they have saved.
Conclusion
As you can see, medical planning is quite important. The worst part about it is that we focus on it too late. This is a common human mistake. While we are young and strong we usually don’t focus on the too distant future. It’s hard to think about old age when things look bright while we’re young. But, if you’re lucky enough and have stumbled on our article, you could be a part of the generation that changes that. Medical planning should become a priority as soon as you land your first job. In the same way, you plan your mortgage payments, vacations, or buying a new car, you should think about this issue. If you do things the right way, in time, and with the aid of professionals as we suggested, you could have the longest vacation in your life once you’re older and enjoy it without worry in the world. Now, that’s something worth planning. Don’t you agree? We bet you do, and if it’s not like that please visit our comment section.
