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Arthur, thank you for your much needed and well stated perspective.
You wrote:
>
>I suppose that it is possible to consider Medicaid planning as a tax
dodge,
>and if a wealthy person hides his assets so that he can go on
Medicaid, I
>too would find it deplorable.
>
>But most of us are not wealthy - we may have modest savings with which
we
>had planned to live in retirement, savings which we have managed to
put
>aside in our earlier years so that we and our spouses would not have
to live
>out our lives in near poverty.
>
>Along comes Parkinson's - or Alzheimer's - or any of a number of
diseases of
>old age that put us in the hands of a caregiver and then in the walls
of a
>nursing home.  The Medicaid law as I understand it says that one must
first
>exhaust one's savings and declare poverty before one is eligible for
>Medicaid.  If this means leaving a surviving spouse, the  one who has
been
>your caregiver, the one who has scraped and saved with you throughout
life,
>in poverty, so be it.
>
>THIS STINKS.  It gives no incentive to a frugal life when, at the end,
all
>you have struggled for and saved for throughout life is plucked from
you as
>you are led to a pauper's grave, your spouse to follow.
>
>Martin Bayne's letter of 30 July was followed the same day by a letter
from
>Rita Weeks which contemplated suicide as an option.  It is ironic that
>suicide is an option that could leave some of a family's assets in
tact,
>save untold billions in medical care and Medicaid expense and provide
>dignified death to those who accept it - but, of course, it is frowned
upon
>by much of society as well as not being legal.
>
>Looks like we've got some hard choices ahead.
>
>Arthur Hirsch
>[log in to unmask]
>Lewisville, TX
>