Expanded Medicaid—Estate Recovery?

The Seattle Times ran Carol Ostrom’s story on December 15, 2013, Expanded Medicaid’s Fine Print Holds Surprise: ‘Payback’ From Estate After Death. As the title implies, the article focuses on estate recovery, and how expanded Medicaid will impact individuals’ estates. Why is this occurring? Because, as the article discusses, prior to Medicaid expansion, “most low-income adults without disabilities could not qualify for typical medical coverage through Medicaid, recovery primarily involved expenses for nursing homes and other long-term care.” Evidently the phone lines to state legislators began to heat up as constituents learned about the estate recovery provision and state leaders began to look for solutions.  The Governor’s office, with the state’s Medicaid agency, announced their intent “to draft an emergency rule to limit estate recovery to long-term care and related medical expenses” and want to fast-track it to get the rule in place before the first of the year.  The state’s senior health-policy expert was quoted that the ACA was not intended “‘to do estate recovery on people going into Medicaid (for health insurance)…. [t]he idea was to expand coverage.’”

The article explains that this concern about estate recovery is not limited to Washington state.  Oregon has already responded by changing their rules in November, so that “[r]ecovery will no longer apply to health benefits for those 55 and over… although the state will collect expenses for long-term care.”