Support Long-term Care Options for Seniors and their Families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 30, 2013

CONTACT: Jessica Leitz, 617-722-1206

BOSTON, MA— State Senator Katherine Clark today testified in support of legislation she sponsored to protect seniors from ineligibility for MassHealth nursing home care.

“Seniors should not be penalized when they make gifts to grandchildren or others without full knowledge of the MassHealth requirements. When facing a catastrophic illness or emergency that requires long-term care, families should not have to contend with arcane rules that do not reflect the intent of the financial decisions that their loved one made years earlier, and it should not take expensive legal representation to sort it all out,” Senator Clark said in testimony before the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing.

For many seniors with long-term nursing care needs, Medicaid is the payer of last resort.  Currently, when MassHealth determines an elderly individual’s eligibility for support for nursing home care, the agency is required to look back over the last 5 years of the person’s financial history to ensure that no assets were transferred for less than fair market value.

All government agencies including MassHealth must be wary of any intentional schemes to defraud the taxpayers. However, many seniors innocently make gifts to family members or others without knowing how those gifts may be interpreted should they require nursing home care. Once that crisis strikes, they often find themselves ineligible.

“Medicaid is a critical safety net for many of our members and their families and plays a central role in providing long-term care,” said Michael Festa, Massachusetts State Director, AARP. “The AARP supports efforts to make MassHealth as efficient as possible. However, we believe that changes that simply shift costs or deny needed care to vulnerable populations should be rejected. MassHealth should focus on deliberately fraudulent or abusive activities and loopholes, not the ordinary actions of families with moderate- and low-income.  We urge the committee to move this bill forward.”

Senator Clark’s bill, An Act relative to transfers of assets by MassHealth members (S503/H1021), would clarify the transfer-of-asset rules, establishing specific criteria that would be used by the Division of Medical Assistance to determine intent. If passed, a regular pattern of small gifts, donations to a religious institution, or a transfer of funds for an unexpected illness or financial crisis of a family member during the look-back period would not necessarily disqualify a person from eligibility.

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