Medicaid is a health insurance program that can be used to pay for a stay in a nursing home or assisted living community. The program is very important to a high percentage of senior citizens, because Medicare will not pay for long-term care.
In Davenport, to be able to qualify for Medicaid you must be able to demonstrate financial need, because Medicaid is a need-based program. Medicaid planning will involve measured divestitures. You spend down your assets in an intelligent manner in advance of applying for the program so that your financial profile will fit the parameters.
When you are engaged in your Medicaid planning efforts, you may have questions about what the healthy or community spouse is allowed to retain. Let’s look at these regulations.
The Family Home
You can actually retain ownership of your home and still qualify for Medicaid coverage, though the property could be in play during Medicaid recovery efforts. There is however an upper equity limit of $543,000. Under federal guidelines, each respective state has the option of raising this limit to as much as $814,000.
If you are married and your spouse is staying in the home, there is no upper equity limit at all.
Monthly Maintenance Needs Allowance
To explain the monthly maintenance needs allowance by way of example, let’s say that your spouse relies on some of your retirement income to maintain his or her standard of living. You are technically supposed to contribute a certain percentage of your income toward your long-term care expenses.
However, because of the monthly maintenance needs allowance, your spouse can continue to utilize your income to pay the bills. This is true even if he or she winds up using all or most of your income to meet the monthly maintenance needs allowance.
The maximum monthly maintenance needs allowance that a state can allow in 2014 is $2931. Each state has the right to set its own limit within certain mandated parameters. The minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance that a state may allow is $1,938.75 through July 1 of this year. At that time an adjustment may be applied. (This is the figure for the contiguous 48 states. The minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance is a bit higher in Alaska and Hawaii.)
Shared Countable Assets
The healthy or community spouse may keep half of the shared countable assets up to a certain prescribed limit that is updated annually. In 2014, the maximum amount that a state may allow the healthy spouse to retain is $117,240. The minimum is $23,448.
Download Our Free Medicaid Planning in Davenport Report
In this post we have answered a few questions about Medicaid. If you would like to learn about the subject in depth, download our special report. The report is being offered free of charge, and you can obtain access to the download right now through this link: Free Medicaid Planning in Davenport Report.
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Ryan M. DenmanandDennis D. Duffy
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