aging parent and hospice care (attorney, legally, diabetes, support)
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anyone know the price of hospice care? 6k plus a month and medicare doesnt cover it. if one qualifies for medicaid for nursing home or hospice care, which can take a couple months paperwork before even approved, they will take every dime the person makes a month, leaving a grand 50 bucks a month to the person for misc expenses. beyond that if the person has a house, they may place a lien on it to suck a bit a more from the terminally ill persons assets. you cant just liquidate property, they look back 5 yrs at what you had. im not talking about millionaires, but ple like my mom, with no other real assets but the house we jointly own.
this is all new to me, but im learning quickly as my aged mother [87] broke her hip, and since has begun a steady decline. she had been in good heath overall, but at that age surgery can be very hard. since the surgery [the doc charged 55k], she hasnt eaten well, has no appetite for food or beverage. she is down to 78 pounds, they stopped the pt therapy on her, which medicare paid for [up to 100 days]. so now after 10 days, medicare drops kicks her out of the system basically. nursing homes and hospice care isnt covered. the extremely obscene cost is hard to justify when looking at the quality of care and facilities. some adult children try to tend to the parent on their own. but in the shape my mom is in, so weak she cant even hold a glass of water on her own, and the fact im alone with no family and a service connected disabled vet myself, makes the options more limited.
now if you happen to be on medicaid having child after child, be over here illegally etc, the whole thing is paid for. one seems to get better benefits without losing everything ya worked for your entire life. and there is yearly section 8 housing fraud to the tune of 2 billion a yr, as well as instances of medicaid fraud. toward the end of life its sad the elderly cant be treated with the peace and dignity they deserve without any evil.
educate yourself on this topic before something happens to a loved one or to yourself. best wishes.
Hospice is FREE but you have to agree to no intervention. They provide everything a person needs to die with dignity, medications, beds, everything! They keep the patient comfortable, pain free and that is all they do. They DO NOT treat the illness to lenghten the persons life, they only make them comfortable and let nature take it's coarse. We used Hospice for Mama, they provided her pain medication and was going to provide her with a hospital bed but by the time we needed their help, she was only days away from dying, so they just did the pain management.
We had another friend who went to the Hospice house to die, he was a millionair but was not charged a dime...
Unless things have changed?
A nursing home is a different matter, they will take everything.
(We kept Mama at home to die and she refused any treatment for her cancer)
You're preaching to the choir. I pay for Assisted Living out-of-pocket about 4800 a month. I have no money left over to pay for my mortgage, my utilities, my car payments, credit cards, food, clothing, etc. I just took on a second job to try to get a little more money each month, but it's nowhere near enough. I'm trying to avoid a bankrupcy if at all possible, although foreclosure of the house and reposession of the cars is imminent. What disgusts me the most is that I'm not the one who's sick. Seems kinda pointless to try to stay in good health when you still lose everything anyway.
Get Long Term Care Insurance if you qualify. I can't stress this enough. Women (or men), make sure you've worked at some point in your life long enough to qualify for social security/disability benefits should something happen.
Gifting Property to Your Children (http://www.coxandcompany.biz/TT/TT02.html - broken link)
We took a class on this for our facility. I work in senior care. It is horrible the way things work. You are almost better off spending all of your money before you get old then the state takes care of you!
Anyhow, you must gift a certain time before your mother gets to bad. I believe there is a set time. But if she "gifts" she has NOTHING and the state can help her, even though YOU have her money. It's kindof like that. I'm not an expert but it's worth looking into.
If you are her caregiver/helper you can also get reimbursed through the state to help pay YOUR income. This is something we help many of our families do.
Gifting Property to Your Children (http://www.coxandcompany.biz/TT/TT02.html - broken link)
We took a class on this for our facility. I work in senior care. It is horrible the way things work. You are almost better off spending all of your money before you get old then the state takes care of you!
Anyhow, you must gift a certain time before your mother gets to bad. I believe there is a set time. But if she "gifts" she has NOTHING and the state can help her, even though YOU have her money. It's kindof like that. I'm not an expert but it's worth looking into.
If you are her caregiver/helper you can also get reimbursed through the state to help pay YOUR income. This is something we help many of our families do.
Be really careful to get legal advice before you start giving property away! State Medicaid programs vary considerably. Free legal assistance is available for persons age 60 and older through your local Area Agency on Aging and may be able to help with this.
Last edited by Sandhillian; 08-20-2009 at 07:52 PM..
Reason: edit
Hospice is FREE but you have to agree to no intervention. They provide everything a person needs to die with dignity, medications, beds, everything! They keep the patient comfortable, pain free and that is all they do. They DO NOT treat the illness to lenghten the persons life, they only make them comfortable and let nature take it's coarse. We used hospice for Mama, they provided her pain medication and was going to provide her with a hospital bed but by the time we needed their help, she was only days away from dying, so they just did the pain management.
We had another friend who went to the Hospice house to die, he was a millionair but was not charged a dime...
Unless things have changed?
A nursing home is a different matter, they will take everything.
(We kept Mama at home to die and she refused any treatment for her cancer)
laura,
hospice house care in some states may be "free" as you put it. but i wasnt aware of any. in nebraska and iowa, and several states i read about, room and board at a hospice house are certainly Not free. that amounted to about 5k for her 22 days, plus there were some extra meds that medicare didnt cover. a nursing home and the hospice house operated much the same, in that if you qualified for medicaid they would take all you have, and leave ya with a mere 50 bucks a month. the difference was only that there maybe some rehabilitative efforts made, where in hospice care, its a waiting to die approach.
if there are states that do pay for all hospice house care, without a cent to the person, im sure pple would find links helpful. im sorry about your mom too.
superk, sorry to hear of your situation, and that someone in your family is sick. ok, what makes me mad are pple that come across the border illegally, and reap the benefits of medicaid, welfare, education for their kids, when they have no legal right to be here or to receive benefits of any kind. if they have children here, they automatically become citizens, despite the parent breaking the law to get to the usa. then pple that have lived here their entire lives are often forced to give all they have up, just to get care in a nursing home or hospice. the system is badly broken.
miasmommy, sadly, my mom hadnt treated me with respect and love for some time. there was no medical excuse for it, the actions, words were her choice. it hurts me to feel she didnt care about me. after all, everyone wants and hopes for mutual love and caring from family and pple close to them. im not perfect, i made mistakes too, but didnt deserve what i got. its only been a couple months, i know i cant expect to heal much in that short amount of time, especially when alone.
My Dad was under Hospice care for his last few weeks and it didn't cost us a cent. That is in Ohio.
I don't know about other states. His house was free and clear and my Mom still lives in it and the house was never even mentioned.
My Aunt put her house in her son's name when her health was failing from diabetes and already had an amputation and it looked like a nursing home was in her future. At that time it had to be 3 years before entering a nursing home. I guess it still is.
Anyway, it was over 3 years from the time she put the house in her son's name untill she went in a nursing home and the nursing home couldn't touch it. The son got the house in the will and sold it.
There was a time frame that had to be met. If she had kept the house in her name, the nursing home could have taken it and sold it to pay for her nursing home care.
I have another cousin who's father-in-law died and he put his house in my cousin's name about a year before he died. That didn't meet the 3 year requirement. She sold the house and when the nursing home went to seize it for payment the house was already sold to someone else.
My cousin ended up losing her own house to pay attorney fees and nursing home expenses because the 3 year prior requirement wasn't met. The nursing home fees became her responsibility because the only source of payment for the fees had transferred from her FIL to her but it was only a year before instead of the 3 year time table. That was the courts decision.
Hospice is different from nursing homes. Everyone needs to know what the laws are in each state and how they apply.
My wife has worked in a nursing home for years. Right now the nursing home fees are $4200.00 a month per patient where she works.
If there is a big bank account, the fees are taken from that. If not, property can be seized unless it was transferred to someone else more than 3 years prior. If neither exists, then I guess Medicaid pays.
I'll have to ask her to be sure.
All of the above mentioned family members who required care were over 65 years old. I don't know how it works with younger people who might need nursing home care.
I do know there were people under 65 in Hospice who didn't have to pay.
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