Politics and Current
Medicaid offices raid deceased homes to recover medical costs
WASHINGTON (AP) – As Salvatore LoGrande battled cancer and all of the pain that comes with it, his daughters promised to keep him within the white house with the pitched roof that he worked so hard for many years ago.
So Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a 12 months after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue over his house if she didn’t pay up quickly.
“Home was everything,” LoGrande, 57, told her father.
But the bill and its accompanying threat weren’t a mistake.
Rather, it was a part of a routine process the federal government requires of each state: recovering money from the estates of deceased individuals who, of their final years, relied on Medicaid, taxpayer-funded medical insurance for the poorest Americans.
An individual’s home is often exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. However, it’s subject to the estate recovery process for people who find themselves 55 or older and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care, similar to a nursing home stay or home health care.
This month, Democratic MP proposed completely abandoning the “cruel” program. Critics say this system collects too little – about 1% – of the greater than $150 billion in Medicaid spends annually for long-term care. They also claim that many states don’t warn individuals who join for Medicaid that their families could face large bills and claims on their estate after their death.
LoGrande says she became involved in a two-year legal dispute with Massachusetts after her father’s death. Just a few years before his death in 2016, she turned to an area nonprofit for advice on caring for her elderly father. The group suggested she enroll him in Medicaid. She even remembers asking a couple of home, but was assured that the state would only search for a house if it sent her father to a nursing home.
“He would never sign a contract for something that would put his home in danger,” she said.
For years, her father received an annual notice of profit renewal from the state’s Medicaid office. She says it wasn’t until after his death, when a state claim for $177,000 got here in, that she saw the primary bill for his care, which included a brief hospital stay for cancer pain, medications and hospice.
“That just blew my guts,” LoGrande said. “It was unfair.”
In 2019, the state reached an agreement with LoGrandes and withdrew its claims on the home.
State policies regarding this recovery process vary greatly, according to the 2021 Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission Reportwhich makes policy recommendations to Congress.
Some states place a lien – a right – on your private home, while others don’t. Meanwhile, some Medicaid offices try to recover all medical costs from patients, similar to doctor visits or prescriptions, while others simply recover long-term care costs. In recent years, Alaska and Arizona have foreclosed on just dozens of properties, while other states are foreclosing on 1000’s of homes price tons of of tens of millions of dollars.
New York and Ohio led the nation in such collections, recovering a complete of over $100 million in a single 12 months, Dayton Daily News investigation found.
Some investigation for the Kansas program, released Tuesday by the Health and Human Services Inspector General, found that this system was profitable – it brought in $37 million and only $5 million was spent recovering the cash. However, the state didn’t all the time collect money from eligible estates.
Last month, a foundation from one among the medical insurance industry’s largest giants called on Massachusetts to change its process for collecting reimbursements for many Medicaid costs, going beyond the federal government’s minimum requirements for recovering long-term care expenses. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts has really useful that the state legislature pass a bill that will prohibit such additional collections.
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Wealth recovery “can perpetuate wealth disparities and intergenerational poverty,” said Katherine Howitt, director of Medicaid policy at the muse.
In Tennessee, which recovered greater than $38.2 million from greater than 8,100 estates last 12 months, Imani Mfalme found herself in an identical situation after her mother died in 2021.
As her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s disease progressed, Mfalme continued to take care of her. But in 2015, when Mfalme was diagnosed with breast cancer and required a double mastectomy, she began to consider other options. She arranged a gathering at her mother’s house with the local Medicaid office. The representative told her to empty her mother’s bank accounts – money that Mfalme had transferred to her mother as a part of her assisted living payments – in order that her mother would qualify for this system.
She recalls feeling somewhat offended through the meeting when the representative asked her thrice, “This is your mother’s house?” The representative, Mfalme said, failed to mention that after her death, she may be forced to sell the home to settle her mother’s Medicaid bills.
Currently, Tennessee’s Medicaid office says she owes $225,000, and the state is looking for a court order requiring Mfalme to sell the home to repay the debt.
Mfalme, now 42, said she wants to pay what she will, however the home is a selected problem. Her mother, a black woman, bought her dream home in Knoxville after she won a landmark discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Boeing, for paying her lower than her colleagues.
“She fought hard for equal pay and equal rights. “Just seeing it torn away just because she was sick and I was sick is just devastating,” Mfalme said of her mother.
TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid office, said in an email to the Associated Press that it could not comment on specific cases.
A report by the Commission on Payments and Access to Medicaid and CHIP really useful that Congress repeal a 1993 law that required states to recoup money from estates, as a substitute making it optional.
Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois reintroduced laws that will have ended the mandate of the federal government. Schakowsky believes the rule is a lose-lose proposition for families who hand over their homes and taxpayers who don’t see much profit from recovery efforts.
“This is one of the most cruel and ineffective programs we see,” Schakowsky told the AP. “It’s a program that doesn’t work for anyone.”
In a deadlocked Congress, with some Republicans calling for limits on Medicaid eligibility, the bill is unlikely to gain the bipartisan support needed to change into law.
There is a minimum of one one who admits this rule doesn’t work: the person who created it.
Many people do not know in regards to the decades-old order, which was intended to encourage people to save for long-term care – otherwise they risk losing the equity of their home, explained Stephen Moses, who now works for the conservative Paragon Health Institute.
“The plan was to provide long-term care options for people who need long-term care, but you have to plan ahead to be able to pay privately so you don’t end up in a public health care program,” Moses said.
In some ways, the White House tried to manage the narrative on Wednesday.
After taking on the rotation of reporters allocated to cover the day by day schedule of the president – work previously carried out by Association of White House Corresponders -President Donald Trump went a step further, asking one in every of the reporters of the brand new within the press pool, together “Fox and Friends” by Lawrence Jones to say to the viewers: “We did a great job, please. Ok? “
“Say it was unbelievable,” said the president after casting the primary meeting of the office of the second term on February 26. The White House was already cut off, however the Audio Associated Press channel remained and captured the moment of a hot microphone.
Jones, who has already lobbyed a number of inquiries to Softball for the president (including “Who is your favorite member of the office?”) I didn’t disappoint.
“The president chose members of the office who can really present their ideas and their ideas. He does not have to worry that they will leave and blow up everything-they are on the same side, “said the co-host Steve Doocy.
“I also think it’s great,” Jones replied. “They are guys who normally – and girls – are used to communicate their ideas. They divide the president’s vision and communicate it in such a concise way. I don’t think we’ve ever seen it in administration. “
“It is people who show how uncertain this president is,” said one in every of the critics who responded to a viral report on the moment of Caugh-on-Camera. “He knows that most of them we watched, right?” Someone said.
In fact, the meeting was dominated by Elon Muskwho opened with a weak joke, saying: “Well, I should simply call myself modest technical support,” and from there he initiated. Photos showed that the president was napping through the presentation of Musk.
Referring to his work as “necessary”, Musk presented one other federal agency within the Doge chopping block. “We spend lots within the defense department, but we spend that over a trillion dollars for interest. If this happens, the country goes, it is going to turn into de facto bankrupt – he said.
Jones was not the one Trump friendly correspondent who joined the press pool on Thursday.
The correspondent of Brian Glenn’s chief house from Real America, perhaps essentially the most absorbing the Networks Pro-Trump network, and the correspondent of the White House Newsmax, James Rosen, were a part of Gaggle, replacing older media, including the Associated Press, which was blocked within the events of the White House for refusing to call the Mexican bay with Mexico with Mexico with Mexico with Mexico with Mexican America after the president announced a change performed by the manager.
Meanwhile, the Association of White House correspondents announced that it might now not coordinate the common range of the White House until the dispute over unlimited access to the media is sustained. Also on Wednesday, the president announced He will sue reporters who use the common practice of anonymous quotes in unfavorable stories or books about it. Such quotes are sometimes used to cause greater honesty from the source, which otherwise might be afraid to talk.
What does all this mean for residents? Less difficult questions and a more favorable relationship for the president, whose crossing of the management has now not checked by Congress.
This explains why this clip He was on the web on Thursday with “The Simpsons”. When the owner of the nuclear plant, Montgomery Burns, decides to use for the governor, his campaign suggests dinner with the Simpsons family to assist the energy director involved with voters from the working class. Lisa Simpson is forced to ask This is an issue From a guest dinner of a guest:
“Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have a fugitive momentum. Why are you so popular?”
Get used to it.
(Tagstotransate) Donald Trump
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USAID cuts are already hitting countries around the world. Here are 20 projects that have been closed
Countries around the world already feel the influence of Trump’s administration decision to eliminate over 90% of foreign assistance contracts and reduce the financing of around $ 60 billion. A number of hours after the announcement at the starting of this week, The programs have been closed, Leaving tens of millions of individuals without access to life -saving care.
About 10,000 contracts with the American International Development Agency were accomplished on Wednesday, in letters sent to non -governmental organizations around the world.
Letters said that the programs were rejected “for the convenience and interests of the US government”, based on an individual with knowledge of the content that they spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly on this subject.
Many programs are present in the fragile countries that are highly depending on American help with a purpose to support healthcare systems, nutrition programs and stop hunger.
Here, several key projects around the world, which AP confirmed, have been closed:
1: In Congo, the motion of a bunch of help against hunger will stop to treat tens of hundreds of malnourished children from May, which, based on a charity, will make children put children in “deadly danger”.
2: According to the Committee on Cadastral Risk Management in Ethiopia in Ethiopia, help stopped for over 1 million people. The Ministry of Health was also forced to terminate the contract of 5,000 employees throughout the country, focused on stopping HIV and malaria, vaccination and assist in a difficult situation in coping with the trauma of war.
3: In Senegal, the largest malaria project was closed. According to a USAID worker, who was not authorized to talk over with the media. Mother and youngsters’s health and nutrition services were also closed. They provided look after tens of hundreds of pregnant women and treatment that would prevent acute malnutrition.
4: In South Sudan, the International Emergency Committee closed a project that provides access to prime quality health and nutrition services over 115,000 people.
5: The program closed by the Norwegian refugee council in Colombia left 50,000 people without saving their lives, including in the northeast, where the growing violence caused a humanitarian crisis once a generation. This included food, shelter, clean water and other basic items for people displaced in the region.
6: According to the International Rescue Committee, 90 community cuisines closed in the capital in the torn war of Sudan, leaving greater than half 1,000,000 people without consistent access to food.
7: According to Bangladesh, 600,000 women and youngsters will lose access to mother’s critical health care, protection against violence, reproductive health services and other life -saving care, in accordance with the United Nations Fund.
8. In small critical assistance, equivalent to access to water, food and health services for over 270,000 people, based on a help group, which didn’t wish to be listed for fear of repression.
9. Over 400,000 people in North Burkina Faso lost access to services equivalent to water. According to the help group, which didn’t want to get replaced for fear of a repressiveist.
10. In Somalia, 50 health centers serving over 19,000 people were closed per thirty days because health care employees are not paid, based on the American help group.
11. In Ukraine, based on money, humanitarian programs, which last yr reached 1 million people, were suspended, based on the spokesman for the Secretary General of the UN.
12. Hundreds of mobile health teams and other services were suspended in Afghanistan, they concerned 9 million people, based on the UN spokesperson.
13. According to the UN Secretary General in Syria in Syria, for about 2.5 million people in the northeast of the country ceased to supply services. Also in the north, a dozen or so health clinics, including the primary hospital recommending this area, closed, said doctors without borderlines.
14. In Kenya, over 600,000 people living in drought -harassed areas and chronic sharp malnutrition will lose their access to the rescue lifetime of food and nutrition, based on Mercy Corps.
15. At Haiti, 13,000 people lost access to dietary support, in accordance with actions against hunger.
16. In Thailand, hospitals help around 100,000 Refugees from Myanmar According to the Border Consortium of the Help Group, closed.
17. According to the International Emergency Committee in Nigeria, 25,000 extremely malnourished children will stop to receive food assistance until April.
18. A program to enhance access to warning systems for disabled people for disabled people was detained in the Philippines.
19. In Vietnam, a program helping disabled people through training carers and providing medical care at home stopped, in accordance with humanity and integration.
20. In Yemen, 220,000 resettled people will lose access to mother’s critical health care, protection against violence, treatment of rape and other life -saving care, in accordance with the United Nations Fund.
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The Associated Press Writers Sylvie Corbet got here in Paris, France, Robert Badendieck in Istanbul, Turkey, Evelyn Musambi in Nairobi, Kenya, Thalia Beata in New York and Edith Lederer in the United births contributed to this report.
(tagstransate) @AP
The speaker of the City Council in New York Adrienne Adams submitted documents to the financial council of the New York campaign to be able to create a campaign committee in the upcoming mayor’s race.
“We currently have chaos and we have reduced confidence in the other side of the town hall,” Adams said in an interview with Gothamist. “That is why I am seriously considering the campaign to become the first woman of the mayor of New York.”
In addition to becoming the first woman chosen as the mayor, Adams could be the first black woman and the first speaker of the city council who took the highest elected place in New York.
confirmed that Adams would do it Wait until the next week to make the final decision to launch. It is expected to offer the address of the “city state” on March 4.
“I wasn’t looking for it; It was not in my plans – she said, adding, “I believe someone have to be the soul of the city.”
A possible Adams offer for the mayor comes amongst the precipitation with the current mayor, Eric Adams. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, recently joined other city leaders, asking him to subside because of the corruption scandal.
If he joins the race, Adams will join the crowded, qualified field. Comptroller City Brad Lander and his predecessor Scott Stringer, Queens Assemblymber Zohran Mamdani, senator of the state Queens Jessica Ramos and senator of State Brooklyn Zellor Myrie.
There were also rumors that the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was considering returning to politics and applying for the mayor.
A recent survey with the Honan Strategy Group showed that Cuomo has a most important role in a democratic basic race of 38%. Mamdani is second at 12%, and the mayor of Adams is in third place with 10%. The Adams speaker received only 2% support from survey respondents.
(Tagstranslate) Mayoral Race (T) Adrienne Adams (T) New York City (T) Eric Adams
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