long term care Tag

There is plenty of debate about the benefits and drawbacks of buying long-term care insurance.  The premiums are expensive for a person in their 70’s who is first considering a purchase. Potential buyers worry that they will pay premiums for years and never have to use the policy. The industry has been in flux and there aren’t too many carriers around. What I do know is that over...

After a Medicaid long-term care application is approved and the Plan of Care (PoC) for  home and community-based services is approved (MLTSS-HCBS), the individual may be faced with a wait. The New Jersey Medicaid HMO’s that provide the services for the State of New Jersey are required by the State contract to have a deep enough provider pool to service the need. However, clients are...

Every day, families are struggling to care for their loved ones at home. The patient may be young with severe disabilities, special needs and nursing needs, or may be aging and unable to live alone due to dementia, confusion or physical weakness. The patient may be dependent on complex durable medical equipment such as  a ventilator, and may require frequent attention from trained attendants,...

Elder Law has really broken out into mainstream popular culture this year!  There was the first season of Better Call Saul, where the attorney who would be Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad gets into elder law and sues an assisted living facility in New Mexico.  And now, on the heels of the new Star Wars Trilogy coming out, we have a galactic elder law fact pattern with a script spec called Old...

If you are active in the social services or political action fields concerning issues that affect the aged members of our society. you may be interested to attend these upcoming programs.The White House Conference on Aging is holding three regional forums in New Jersey this year – Friday May 12th in East Windsor, Wednesday June 10th in Cherry Hill, and Friday June 26th in Whippany. See...

Oftentimes,  a client will come to talk to me and say “I want to put my assets into a trust.” My question of course is,  What are you trying to accomplish? Who suggested it?What do you think a trust is?” Sometimes the answer is, “so my assets don’t get spent on a nursing home.” Often the client says,”I don’t want my assets to be spent on a...

You probably know by now that NJ Medicaid’s Home and Community Based Services are now being administered NJ FamilyCare and that the State’s Comprehensive Medicaid Waiver has created a whole new landscape that is centered around managed care. http://www.state.nj.us/humanservices/dmahs/home/mltss.html When applying for these services you will encounter a lot of code words. For...

The Medicaid program for long-term care was created by Congress decades ago and is administered by the States and their myriad separate counties. Did you know that there are at least 11 bodies of law that interpret this  byzantine program? From top to bottom we have the Federal Medicaid statutes (42 USC 1396); the Social Security statutes pertaining to the SSI program (42 USC 1382); SSI...

A few days ago I met with a new client whose elderly relative had given out $12,000 gifts per person to a set of favorite relatives about 4 years ago because someone at the bank told her that if the gifts were limited to this amount $12,000 it would not be counted against her if she had to go to a nursing home. You would not believe how often this incorrect legal advice is given out, often by...

I have frequently encountered the question, “can I switch to a different facility to continue my rehab?” I don’t know where the notion came from, but it appears that people believe that once they begin their post-hospitalization rehab under Medicare Part A, they have to stay there for the duration of therapy. Medicare Part A pays for services rendered in a skilled nursing...