Medi-Cal

Long Term Living Care for Seniors: What Are My Options? A majority of people who reach the age of 65 will need long term care sometime in their lives whether permanently or temporarily. Since women live longer than men, they generally require long term care longer, sometimes twice as long. And if you’re single, your chances increase that you will need to pay for care services. It’s not too soon to start thinking about your options before you reach an age where you can’t do everything for yourself. Let’s explore some of them. Home Care If you are still relatively [...]

Long-Term Medi-Cal: Can Younger People Qualify? When you picture a nursing home, who do you imagine there? Most likely, you envision relatively young nurses, therapists, and other staff, along with relatively old residents. But, although the elderly do make up the majority of those who live in nursing homes, they’re not the only ones who require and receive skilled nursing care in such facilities. In 2000, around 10% of nursing-home residents nationwide were between the ages of 31 and 64. By 2010, that figure had grown by almost 50% to 14.2% of residents. In 2014, the most recent year covered [...]

What happens if you need skilled nursing care before retirement? Although we often think of nursing homes as a place for the very old, life is hardly so predictable that we can ignore the risk of needing such care while still working. Fortunately, long-term Medi-Cal recognizes that risk, and specially provides for business property in defining eligibility for the program. In short, business property is exempt property, but there are some important caveats to that statement. In this post, I want to provide a quick refresher of long-term Medi-Cal basics (with links so you can read more if interested), and [...]

Long-Term Medi-Cal: Is the Grass Greener on the Other Side of the State Line? As the old saying has it, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. We all tend to compare our own situations with those of the people around us. But when we do, we often give too much credit to how good others seem to have things, and too much attention to the problems in our own lives. This common reaction is true not only when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but also when it comes to the law. For example, if [...]

Is Long-Term Medi-Cal Planning Inappropriate? If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you probably realize that planning for long-term Medi-Cal can be a highly complicated process. Because of this, some people who are not used to complicated financial or other planning can be wary of it, wondering if it’s somehow inappropriate. Even if it’s technically legal, they may ask, does it nonetheless violate the “spirit of the law”? Well, I don’t think so—for at least two reasons: First, when you consider Medi-Cal planning in the context of other sophisticated legal planning techniques, you realize that such [...]

Long-Term Medi-Cal: Where Do You Start? Medi-Cal is a joint medical-welfare program of California and the federal government. Long-term Medi-Cal is California’s version of long-term Medicaid, which helps needy individuals pay for care in a skilled nursing facility (i.e., a nursing home). Understandably but unfortunately, long-term Medi-Cal is a complicated program, and the state doesn’t always do the best job at explaining it to those who might benefit from it. To help those who are looking for more information on how long-term Medi-Cal could help them, I’ve compiled the following brief list of educational resources that I think are particularly [...]

Long-Term Medi-Cal: Spend Down and Its Alternatives One of the most common questions that Californians have about qualifying themselves or a loved one for long-term Medi-Cal is whether they will have to lose all of their property to be eligible. After all, long-term Medi-Cal has asset limits that a person must satisfy to qualify for the program. Even so, the answer is no: Some property—including some major assets like a home or car—is exempt, and Medi-Cal won’t consider it when determining eligibility. As a result, many people can qualify for long-term Medi-Cal already, even if they own, say, an expensive [...]

Planning For Long-Term Medi-Cal Requires A Long-Term View If you look for information on long-term Medi-Cal online, you’ll find many posts—including some of my own—that focus on the initial eligibility determination. That makes sense, because it’s a complex topic on its own and is what most people want to know about. But planning for long-term Medi-Cal involves so much more than just getting your foot in the door at the outset. A comprehensive long-term Medi-Cal plan should, at a minimum, address three distinct phases through: Eligibility planning, which helps people qualify for long-term Medi-Cal. Income planning, which helps people who [...]

What Will Widespread Genetic Testing Mean for Long-Term Medi-Cal? In the last decade, several companies have begun offering relatively inexpensive genetic tests to consumers. For as little as $100, these tests can help people trace their ancestry and, more importantly for present purposes, identify genes associated with certain health risks. But as the New York Times reported earlier this year, these tests pose some risks for long-term care (LTC) insurance providers. What does that mean for Medi-Cal? Genetic Tests and Long-Term Care Insurance Popular genetic testing kits that offer genetic-health reports read thousands of an individual’s genes that are related [...]