Don't Use Joint Annuities For LTC Artificial Impoverishment

Remember, only the income of the disabled spouse is counted toward Medicaid eligibility and must be forfeited to care costs. The well spouse can–income wise–live like the rich and famous. All at taxpayers expense–taxpayers who will now be picking up the tab for the care in the nursing home of the shrewd annuity client.

Well, not so fast. There remain a few details the customer doesnt hear about, when presented with these Medicaid planning “strategies.”

First, the consumers wish to avoid the cost of a nursing home expense is not a problem that should be solved by me or any other taxpayer. It is the consumers problem.

Second, the stunning shortsightedness of placing a further burden on Medicaid–a system graciously funded by this country for the care of the poor–should be self-evident.

Third, the system these consumers so wish to be on, alongside the truly needy, is a system that experts everywhere agree offers no choice and, sorry to say, that is, is as often as not, marred by second-class care. (Naturally, the latter point is a direct result of stretched resources. This is exacerbated further by these Medicaid planning schemes.)

Let us not forget one more point. It is a message rarely delivered to the throngs of people who attend these joint annuity seminars for Medicaid planning. The message is this: The reason there are so many people in nursing homes on Medicaid is simply that institutional care remains the only care setting for which most state Medicaid programs will pay.

If a consumer has any kind of income at alland I assume most of the throng-goers do, because why else would they be attending these seminars?the truly professional financial advisor could feather-in some LTC insurance benefits for relative peanuts. That way, the client who needs care one day could go to a nice assisted living facility of his or her choice. Most importantly, the client could go there as a paying customer with head held high.

As it happens, this client and the professional advisor who worked with this client would also be assisting the Medicaid system–by keeping people of means off of it.

Lastly, and perhaps just as importantly, this client and advisor would be preventing the less ethical marketers out there from profiting on client fears and their own greed.

Carroll Busher, of Financial Care Services, Grand Rapids, Mich., is a senior product specialist who maintains a website on senior health care products. His e-mail is [email protected]. This article first appeared in the July 2002 LTC e-Wire, a publication of National Underwriter Life & Health Edition.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, August 19, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.