Are You Gambling With Your Medicaid Application?
Are you a gambling man or woman? You may not realize it, but when you jump into planning for nursing home Medicaid eligibility without having all your ducks in a row you are essentially gambling with anywhere from $3,000 – $10,000 or more. You may as well sit down at the high stakes table and put it all on red. After all, at least you would get some free drinks and you might double your money. If you are thinking of gambling with who prepares the nursing home Medicaid application, files it (on time), and walks you through the process step by step in order to win your case then keep reading so you at least have your eyes open when you are rolling the dice.
Avoid This With Your Application
What you want to avoid is getting ambushed by someone who has no obligation to you not honoring their promises to you. That broken promise usually leaves you in a lurch, an expensive lurch. I’m giving you this free heads up because it bothers me every time I meet someone who mistakenly relied on some nursing home staff worker to handle the Medicaid application and then at the very last minute the nursing home decides they are not going to handle the Medicaid application. That is a mistake and financial loss that was easy to prevent with someone who knew what they were doing.
Why Would They Do This?
The most common reason is that the person has too many assets, too much income, or a transfer penalty issue which they know they have no business giving legal advice about. That is fine by itself, but the problem is in many cases I see they wait until it can be too late for you to salvage an earlier Medicaid eligibility date. That costs you money, money which I would have done everything to save for you. And since they do not represent you, you never hired them to handle the Medicaid application there is next to nothing you can do about it if this happens to you. Their boss is the nursing home administrator, not you.
This Can Be Worse
If that isn’t bad enough, it gets worse when they continue to string you along and make you believe they have the Medicaid application under control when anyone who knows what they are doing would easily spot critical mistakes like asset, income, penalty transfers, or documentation issues. This is usually worse than the first situation because here you are usually looking at 2 months or more of lost benefits before everybody discovers the nursing home’s mistake.
I think your case is too important to gamble on and your loved one has too much riding on the outcome. So what do you think, put it all on red or try something a lot safer to get the results you need?