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ElderLaw
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Housing Options
Incapacity Issues
Medical Assistance Issues
“Medical Assistance” is the program under which Minnesota administers federally funded Medicaid programs. Minnesota’s Medical Assistance programs are administered by the state’s Department of Human Services, which has a content-rich web site rich at www.dhs.state.mn.us. Medical Assistance is a complicated subject, and a brief summary will have to suffice in this space. Medical Assistance focuses on long-term care issues such as the expense of residential care facilities or home and community-based services, as distinguished from “acute care” issues addressed by Medicare programs. Because governmental policy views Medical Assistance as the “last resort” source of financial assistance, eligibility for Medical Assistance benefits involves strict limits upon assets and income. For Medical Assistance purposes, assets are categorized as available, unavailable or excluded. A set of “look-back” rules restrict the applicant’s ability to reduce his or her available assets by making gifts or other “uncompensated transfers” of assets prior to the individual’s application for benefits. The look-back rules impose periods of ineligibility as penalties for gifts and other uncompensated transfers. Under certain circumstances, the county providing Medical Assistance benefits will assert a claim against the estate of the recipient of the benefits, if there is no surviving spouse, to recover the cost of benefits paid for the deceased recipient’s long-term care. Medical assistance questions frequently involve a tangle of other legal issues in tax, real estate, estate planning and family law, and knowledgeable legal counsel can be a great help.
Home and Community Based Services
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