General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: State Medicaid offices target dead people's homes to recoup their health care costs [View all]Ms. Toad
(34,124 posts)People on Medicaid aren't forced to sell certain assets in order to receive Medicaid. But if those assets are not used to pay for expenses paid by Medicaid it creates a windfall for the heirs - at the expense of the rest of us who are footing the bill.
A different system would be a whole lot better - one which assured everyone access to medical care (including long-term care at the end of life). But that's not the system we have. The system we have does at least let the person receiving care retain certain assets including a home) as long as they are alive. Once they have died, the assets they were allowed to retain while receiving "free" care are used to repay the expenses we all shared in (in the form of taxes) while they were alive.