Watch Your Language: Institutionalized Spouse

Institutionalized. Sounds kind of scary, right? Fortunately, when we’re talking about Medicaid, saying someone is the institutionalized spouse really only means that they are the nursing home resident, the person who needs Medicaid coverage. [Read More]

High Five: The Zen Guide to Planning for a Nursing Home Stay

If you’re dealing with a nursing home, it will quickly become clear that the options for paying the care bill are dizzying. Paying out of pocket is cost prohibitive. Long-term care insurance is probably not workable. For many, that leaves Medicaid, but those rules are spread over hundreds of pages of federal and state statutes, regulations, and policy manuals. What you need is an oasis from the stress, not the exponentially increasing stress that comes from trying to make sense of all those rules. Don’t despair. You can achieve calm in this whirlwind. Follow these five steps and you’ll soon find that the zen of nursing home planning is easily reached. [Read More]