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1/ Tawanda Rhodes had just lost her mother when she received a bill from Medicaid seeking $198,660.26 for her mother’s care. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… 
2/ Rhodes was blindsided. She’d spent the past five years caring for her mother at their family home in Boston, having abandoned her life in Brooklyn, to prevent her mother from draining state resources in a nursing home.
3/ Now, if she couldn’t cover the debt, the state could compel her to sell her family home to cover the expense. Rhodes made $1,400 a month and was the primary caregiver for her husband. The home was the last bit of wealth she had.
4/ “I said to myself, ‘I don’t care what they do to me. I can take care of myself,’” Rhodes said. “But I couldn’t have my dying husband thrown out into the street.” She wrote to nearly every elected official in the state. “No one would help me.”
5/ Rhodes applied for debt forgiveness available to family members who serve as caregivers and those who face financial hardship. She was denied both provisions. “My parents made their 40 acres and a mule with blood, sweat, and tears, and now [the state wants] that too?”
6/ Rhodes is one of many Americans surprised by the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program, which allows states to seize recipients’ property to pay back Medicaid debts.
7/ Lisa Musgrave, 56, is considering public housing after the state forecloses on her home to pay her mother’s Medicaid debt, while Walter Bollman’s family home will be seized upon his death to pay his wife’s debt. Though not homeless, his children will lose their inheritance.
8/ Estate recovery was designed to mitigate costs of a Medicaid program strained by aging Baby Boomers. However, in Massachusetts, an average of $16,442 per estate was recovered in 2003; offsetting less than 2 percent of its long-term-care costs that year.
9/9 Despite its low returns, what makes estate recovery particularly damaging is its ability to blindside, and bankrupt, the very people Medicaid was designed to protect. on.theatln.tc/DZk1kZW
