The Outrage of Medicaid Estate Recovery

One nasty surprise that elderly people and their relatives encounter is Medicaid Estate Recovery. This is defined at Medicaid.gov thusly:

State Medicaid programs must recover certain Medicaid benefits paid on behalf of a Medicaid enrollee. For individuals age 55 or older, states are required to seek recovery of payments from the individual's estate for nursing facility services, home and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug services. States have the option to recover payments for all other Medicaid services provided to these individuals, except Medicare cost-sharing paid on behalf of Medicare Savings Program beneficiaries.

While there are exemptions families still have to go through the time and expensive of dealing with a lot of gratuitous paperwork.

The fact that going old and dying in America is outrageously expensive is bad enough. But having to impose this burden upon people shows how twisted the political system has become. It seems that social policy in this country has adopted a reverse Robin Hood principle: stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

What's odd is that conservatives are always complaining about the Estate Tax and how it imposes a "burden" on millionaires and billionaires. Medicaid Estate Recovery falls most heavily upon the poor and middle class. Pamper the rich screw everybody else.