Long Term Care Requirements for Texas Medicaid Insurance Consultant

Long Term Care Requirements for Texas Medicaid

Written on August 28, 2010 – 2:17 pm | by Gabrielle Scanlan

kid bathing image by Maciej Zatonski from Fotolia.com Medicaid provides help with bathing. Long-term care Medicaid in Texas can get you help with the following: dressing, bathing and using the bathroom, preparing meals, grocery shopping and managing money. Medicaid can also get you help with light housework, nursing care in your home and care in a nursing facility or other place. Hospice services can also be obtained through Medicaid services.

elderly lady image by pixelcarpenter from Fotolia.com The elderly can apply for long-term care. In Texas, to be eligible for long-term care Medicaid, you must fit into one of these categories: You must either be an adult or child with medical or physical disabilities, over the age of 60 or an adult or child with a mental retardation.

home sweeet home image by .shock from Fotolia.com A home does not make you ineligible, but it must be no more than a $500,000 dollar home. A person approved for Medicaid assistance in Texas can own a home worth up to $500,000 dollars, a car of any value, and an irrevocable funeral or burial plan. If a person has a cash surrender value on his life insurance, it can be no greater than $1,500. Anything over that would put him over the resource limit. Texas does have a Medicaid estate recovery plan. This means, in short, that Medicaid has the right to bill your estate at the time of your death for services rendered. They can only file a claim against your estate if you are 55 or older. A claim will not be filed if there is a surviving spouse living in the home, a surviving child under 21, a surviving child of any age who is blind or permanently disabled or an unmarried adult child who was residing in the home at least one year prior to the Medicaid recipient’s death. They will also not file a claim unless it is cost effective. So they wouldn’t file a claim if the value of the estate is $10,000 or less, the recoverable costs of Medicaid is $3,000 or less or the cost of selling that property would be equal to or greater than the property’s value.

money image by cherie from Fotolia.com If you want to be on Medicaid, be aware of income restrictions. A person would not be eligible for Medicaid assistance if she has countable resources of over $2,000. This includes any money she has in checking or savings, money from cash surrender values of life insurance policies and income she receives each month. All together, the person can have no more than that $2,000. There are ways to get the income under that amount. For instance, a person can sign her life insurance policies over to the funeral home she plans to use. Once she does that, there is no cash surrender value. She can also lessen the funds in her bank account by using it to get things she needs: clothes, repairs on a home, etc. You must be able to provide a receipt of what you spent the money on.