Medicaid is not a "welfare" program

[Suzu]

If you apply for and use Medicaid, your state is bound by federal law to recover - from your estate - whatever costs were incurred on your behalf for treatment. They usually wait until you die, but not always. They say that if the legal costs of a Medicaid lien on your estate are greater than the amount they can expect to recover, they don't bother, but how much does it actually cost to file a creditor's lien against an estate? My guess is that most Medicaid users will have the cost of whatever care they received deducted from what they leave behind when they die.

I can't help but think of all the politicians raving about how Medicaid is such an overwhelming expense for the government. Granted, some people won't leave much for the state to grab, but not nearly as many as you may be led to think by the demagogues.

Read all about it, here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/liens.htm

[Anti Federalist]

Sounds about right.

The whole purpose of the medical estblishment seems to have shifted to "string you along until you're broke and dead".

[jbauer]

It has always been my understanding that the vast majority of spending through medicaid is long term care. Most of which is not recovered because at $60k+++ a year for LTC and an average stay of 2.9 years, although that number is skewed by a huge chunk who are there and get better (hip replacement type stay) or die shortly after getting in. So the ones who are there long long term eat through their savings very quickly and the rest is on our tab.

There is also a huge market for "medicaid planning" where assets are assigned in such a way to limit what the government can get its hands on.

[LibertyEagle]

Medical costs are outrageous these days. I'd like to see what would happen to the prices if government backed all the way out and there were no more insurance companies.