Medicaid means testing is driven by the moral belief that people should support themselves before turning to the public for help. It’s driven primarily by that moral ideology, and not a desire to save money. In other respects Medicaid is extremely generous: no co-pays, no cost-benefit calculations for treatments, etc. But Americans in many cases would rather spend more money ensuring that public support only goes to deserving people than they save by doing so.
You see this all over the place. American schools will spend $50,000/year ensuring a child with dyslexia can get individualized educational support. But they won’t give free lunches to kids whose parents could technically afford them but don’t use their money wisely.
Do we really want a system where a very elderly person, with say millions in assets, gets all their nursing home care for free in their final years, just so they can leave a bigger inheritance to their kids? I don't.
Going thru this now with my own elderly parents - I am perfectly OK with medicare ending up owning the equity left in their house, and meager other assets - to recoup money spent on their care - people should support themselves with whatever resources they have available, before taxpayers are asked to pick up the expense.
I didn't say millions in assets -- in fact, the way the system works is that those are the only people who come out with any of value to pass down to their heirs! The system is working for those people as intended; they benefit from lower costs (since everyone has to pay market price) and they are not penniless from it. The rest are drained of everything they spent their life building, and denied the opportunity to share that with their loved ones.
The thing is that death is a universal experience; Many, if not most of us, will end up needing some form of late-life care. Private insurance companies often won't cover what is ultimately inevitable. It would make sense for more of our public policy to aid in what is so common.
The average nursing home cost is $7k/mo. The average nursing home stay is 1-2 years. That's enough money to bankrupt most US families entirely yet comparatively little in the public budget. We spend _much_ more public money on incarceration every year.
>>The rest are drained of everything they spent their life building, and denied the opportunity to share that with their loved ones.
But why shouldn't they be drained of their life savings if they move into a nursing home and need to pay for care? If they have the money - any money - that is only going to be left to their heirs, why shouldn't it be used to pay for their own care?
It is an honest question - why should I inherit money from my parents estate, and the taxpayers pickup the bill for their care? If they died today, and medicare didn't claw back from their estate, there would maybe be 200K that needs to be split 5 ways - why should my siblings and I get this 'windfall' and expect the taxpayers to fund their nursing home?
You see this all over the place. American schools will spend $50,000/year ensuring a child with dyslexia can get individualized educational support. But they won’t give free lunches to kids whose parents could technically afford them but don’t use their money wisely.