If you are in the hospital, the last thing you want is for a family member or a trusted friend to be denied information about your condition or prognosis. But this could happen if you haven’t already given authorization about who can receive details of your medical condition. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act […]
If you are a Medicare beneficiary receiving skilled care for a chronic condition, you no longer have to show improvement in order to have the care covered, but your provider (such as a doctor, home care agency, or nursing home) may not know this. Even though a recent lawsuit settlement mandated a nationwide educational campaign […]
Some 29 states currently have laws making adult children responsible for their parents if their parents can’t afford to take care of themselves. These “filial responsibility” laws have rarely been enforced, but six years ago when federal rules made it more difficult to qualify for Medicaid long-term care coverage, some elder law attorneys predicted that nursing homes would start using […]
Medicaid’s Rules In order to be eligible for Medicaid, you cannot have recently transferred assets. Congress does not want you to move into a nursing home on Monday, give all your money to your children (or whomever) on Tuesday, and qualify for Medicaid on Wednesday. So it has imposed a penalty on people who transfer […]
There is currently proposed legislation being considered by Congress that would make an important change to the Medicaid income rules for married couples. Specifically, if H.R. 1771 (114th Congress) is enacted into law, it would mean that all income derived from certain annuities, whether payments are made solely to the community spouse or paid to […]
For many couples, it seems quite natural that sooner or later they will want to legally cement their relationship by getting married. Whether or not that couple attaches a particular religious or cultural significance to the act of getting married, it is a fact that our society recognizes a marriage as a de facto unification […]
When applying for Medicaid benefits to help pay for long-term care, the applicant must list the value of all of their assets that are “countable” under the eligibility rules of the program, as administered in this state by the Connecticut Department of Social Services (“DSS”). Some assets are fully exempt and we will describe those […]