BackTitle XIX SOCIAL SECURITY ACT OF 1965 - Your Benefits & Entitlements
Article submitted by David W. King, CLU, CSA, president of Seniors Care Associates. For more information call 801-424-1444.
No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings seniors have so carefully put away over a lifetime so they may enjoy dignity in their later years.
W. Paul Wharton, senior staff attorney at Utah Legal Services in a Utah Bar Journal stated, "The federal statute is extensive, complex, redundant, convoluted, arcane, and generally not the best bedtime reading. It may have more exceptions upon exceptions even than the Internal Revenue Code..."
If a senior contracts: Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's, Paralysis, or Stroke, in almost all of these situations Medicare will only pay for skilled care. Skilled care is care given by an RN or above. These types of diseases usually require custodial care which is not paid for by Medicare!!
What you are then told is you will have to spend down your assets before you are eligible for assistance under Title XIX. You are also told this is welfare!!! This is absolutely not true. Under Title XIX your led to believe that a "nursing home spouse" needs to "Spend Down" to: $2,000 in cash/an automobile (no more than $4,500 in value), they let you keep your wedding ring, funeral plan, (irrevocable to $7,000), burial plot, and cash value life insurance with no more than $1,500 in value. In addition you will be allowed to keep $45.00 month of your income!!!!!
You are not told that if you plan to preserve your assets all of the above will not happen!!! You are led to believe the $4,600 per month you are eligible to receive in a skilled nursing facility is welfare! It is not. It is an entitlement and a benefit.
Planning is the key!!! Structuring your assets for protection and preservation is the key to eliminate worry about ever having to go to a re-hab facility. While the Medicaid gang would like to take everything you've worked for all your life it's just not legally or morally right. The insurance companies would have you spend all your money on long term care as long as you're healthy. Our cause is:
"To PROTECT our "Seniors" after working for 30, 40, or 50 years from losing their
HOMES, PENSIONS, & SAVINGS
Planning is the key to accomplishing this lifelong goal.