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Comment by wavefunction | Hacker News Reader

I am just about to sell my father's $320,000 house so I can pay for his nursing home care. He sadly did not have the foresight to acquire long-term disability insurance or put his assets into a trust so we'll be paying out of pocket until his money runs out and he goes on Medicaid, which will still only cover 60% of his care.

$320,000 / $8000+ a month (not including rising costs) means he has 3.25 years of care coverage paying out of pocket which I don't consider many years.

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Don't forget about the annual max gift tax limit (15k for 2020). Your father could reasonably gift you 15k a year (possibly another 15k to your spouse if you happen to be married) to reduce his savings a tiny bit quicker, so medicaid kicks in a bit sooner. At that point you could maybe even claim your parent as a dependent, and help him pay for his medical costs (which I think you can also deduct?).

I'm not sure on the particulars, and certainly don't take the above as any kind of financial advice -- I just started looking into this for an aging parent myself. Though, it might be worth talking to an accountant and see what is applicable for your location.

There are the local medicaid/medicare administrations and elder care law specialists that can advise on medical care as well as the various tax writeoffs and eligibility for programs that the poster should investigate now since rules vary so much from state to state in the USA, and he is talking about years of care.

If I understand correctly from my non-CPA googling, $15K is just the amount you don't have to report to the IRS. You can give more, up to a lifetime limit of several million, before the gifts are taxed. How that interacts with medicaid, I have no idea.

This is correct the 15k per year is just a reporting limit.

> I am just about to sell my father's $320,000 house so I can pay for his nursing home care.

You’d be doing this in the UK on the NHS too. The patient needs to pay until their assets are drawn down until a certain amount, and then the government will take over until death.

There are options to save money yet provide good care: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ActiveAging/story?id=3487260&p...

Is he not eligible for Medicare? I thought even the pricier Part C plans would be less than $8k for a whole year's worth of premiums + the out of pocket maximum

Medicare doesn't cover long-term care

The last time I had to look at this, one cannot have any assets in excess of a small dollar number for Medicaid, so one has to start drawing down all savings to pay for care, and Medicare does not cover long term care, only short stays for specific reasons.

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