Medicaid
Long-term care is expensive, whether at home, in assisted living, or in a nursing home. With nursing home care costing about $6,500 a month in the Oakland, Macomb and Wayne County areas of Metro Detroit, many people cannot afford to pay for nursing home care for a very long time.
These costs, for the most part, are not covered by Medicare. They are, on the other hand, covered at least partially by long-term care insurance. Unfortunately, few of today's seniors have such insurance. Fortunately, the Medicaid program is there to help. Medicaid is a government benefit program that pays for part of the cost of a senior's long-term care in a skilled nursing facility.
Qualifying for Medicaid can be an extremely complicated process because Medicaid is a federal program administered by the State of Michigan. As such there is the federal Medicaid law, federal Medicaid regulations, Michigan Medicaid law, and Michigan Medicaid regulations that must be complied with. Medicaid is so complex that the United States Supreme Court has said the Medicaid Act is "an aggravated assault on the English language, resistant to attempts to understand it."
Medicaid's complexity causes problems for seniors and their families confronting the challenge of how to pay for nursing home care: well meaning people give wrong advice that if relied upon, can cause a senior to become impoverished when they otherwise would not have had to.
Medicaid attorney Andrew Byers' elder law practice is focused on helping seniors and their families navigate the Medicaid Planning and Medicaid Application process throughout Michigan. I guide my clients through the complexities of Medicaid and I help my clients take advantage of what the system has to offer and how to avoid the many traps and pitfalls. There are six tests to qualify for Medicaid.