Many seniors today have heard stories about friends and friends of friends who have lost their homes to the government to pay for nursing home costs. The fact is that this is a harsh reality for many people, particularly those with no long term coverage for nursing home care. Medicare does not cover nursing home care on a long term basis, but Medicaid does. What many people are not informed of, however, is that Medicaid can seize your assets in order to pay for your care.
Understanding that your care can jeopardize your assets can be terrifying, but there are some things that should be cleared up. First, your home will not be seized while your at-home spouse still resides within the home. Second, if you have other assets or means of paying for care, your home will not be taken or seized. This can offer great comfort to many worried seniors. Put plainly, however, the best step that you can take is simply to take out a policy that covers long term nursing home care. While it is easy to think that you will never need such a policy, statistics show that a significant number of seniors require the care for at least one period in their lives.
There are, of course, loopholes to this law, but the government is working hard to close them. At current, the only way to avoid this action is to place the home in the name of the party who does not need care at least five years prior to entrance into the nursing facility. Since this requires a bit of prediction on the part of the family, it is all but impossible to do. The sad truth is that your nursing care can result in the loss of your assets, and taking out a policy to cover such care is truly the only way to prevent this.
