Nursing Home Medicaid Eligibility Without an Endless Spend-Down?

With the right plan, you can use 100% legal strategies to protect cash, retirement accounts, or business assets.

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You Can Protect

a home
bank accounts
retirement accounts
a spouse’s income

Sooner than you might think.

Spending-Down is not the Only Option

Your family worked hard their entire life to accumulate some form of security and wealth, only to face the prospect of losing it all due to a nursing home stay. If you do nothing, Medicaid may require them to spend down their savings in order to qualify for assistance.

This is typically an incredibly painful process – with nursing homes taking enormous amounts of money from residents desperate to keep their life savings. This doesn’t have to be your family’s experience.

With The Shea Law Firm, you don’t have to worry about losing all of your family’s hard-earned savings. With nearly 25 years of experience, we understand how these Medicaid regulations work and we are prepared to help you protect your family’s assets and get the long term care they need without having to spend it all down unnecessarily. We can help you protect what matters most so that you don’t become another statistic of those forced into financial ruin by Medicaid. We can stop the spend-down.

Here’s What We Do

Stop the Spend-Down

If your family loses everything to the spend-down, then you have no security and almost no options. What can you do with no money left? Not much.

We provide financial security for your family by stopping the Medicaid spend-down so you are not put at anyone’s mercy and left with no options to protect your loved one or their spouse.

Get Medicaid

Securing Medicaid benefits can provide a lifeline for families with a loved one in a nursing home, ensuring proper care and financial support for the rest of their life.

Experience peace of mind knowing that Medicaid assistance is there to shoulder the burden, allowing you to focus on cherishing precious moments with your loved one.

Keep Medicaid

At The Shea Law Firm, we understand the immense relief that comes with knowing your Medicaid benefits are secure, even if a simple mistake occurs.

Trust in our expertise to safeguard your lifeline, providing you and your family the comfort and confidence to live without fear of losing benefits in the future.

Here’s What People Think About Working With Us

He is very easy to work with and actually cares about the people he is helping. Thank you Mr. Shea because without your help I’m not sure what I would have done.

Barbara D.

To the point, experienced, and obviously kind-hearted due to the fact that you do way more than most. THANK YOU!

Kelly

We were also able to achieve this without invoking any spend down by my father in law’s spouse. In addition, we slashed monthly nursing home cost from over $5,500 every month down to $0.00 out of pocket.

Greg C.

Here’s What You Get

One on one service from Attorney Richard Shea
Regularly scheduled updates on the progress of your case
A proven track record of success
We escalate with the HHSC after 45 days
Transparent and comprehensive fee structure
We deal with the HHSC, you don’t have to
Independent advice you can rely on
We complete the MERP questionnaire at no cost
We prepare and file the application for you
We prepare QITs at no extra cost when needed
Simple and transparent fees
25 years of Medicaid experience
Comprehensive custom solutions for your unique facts
Available by call, video conference, e-mail, or text
Multi-disciplinary collaborative approach
If the HHSC makes a mistake, we appeal it at no extra cost
We file your annual Medicaid renewals at no cost
You avoid Medicaid Estate Recovery at no extra cost
We cure penalties from previous gifts in the last 5 years
Power of Attorney and Homestead protection at no extra cost

Frequently Asked Questions

This is a very common belief and one belief that I am happy to say is 100% myth. Most of the families we work with are after someone has already entered a nursing home. Married or un-married, a nursing home admission does not make protecting your life savings impossible.

Unfortunately no. For eligibility purposes the HHSC views a married couple as one unit. Everything either spouse owns is evaluated as part of the Medicaid application process through the process called “deeming.”

IRAs, 401(k)s, and other types of retirement accounts are not automatically protected from a Medicaid spend-down. In some cases they are while in other cases they are not. We can show you the path to protect those retirement accounts.

No. Many nursing homes are a mix of Medicaid beds and private pay beds. This means a patient on Medicaid receives is in the same facility and receiving the same care that the person paying $8,000 or more a month receives. The nurses are not checking each patient’s file to see who is paying the bill, I assure you.

No. You can choose any nursing home that accepts Medicaid. Medicaid has a network of participating providers like every other commercially available health insurance. Many nursing homes accept Medicaid and private pay residents because very few patients can pay the private pay nursing home cost their entire life.

No, it is half of everything either of you own combined. The $148,620 figure is the maximum amount for the healthy spouse AFTER dividing all the assets in half. That means in order to keep $148,620 under the default rules you need $297,240 ($148,620 * 2) and you would still lose all the assets exceeding $148,620.

Medicaid covers the room and board of the nursing home (the largest expense) and all medically necessary expenses with a few exclusions. If you have co-pays from doctor visits or prescriptions Medicaid will pick those up once you are approved as long as you use Medicaid participating providers and vendors.

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