Medicaid estate recovery has been a mandated federal policy since 1993, set up primarily to recoup rising costs. Workers pay taxes into the system throughout their careers, but if a person over age 55 receives Medicaid benefits for long-term medical care, states are required to seek reimbursement after they die. It can be a small amount, or it can be much more.
This makes Medicaid unique: The government never asks to be repaid for approved Medicare or Social Security benefits, nor does it ask for money back from other antipoverty programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, after a person’s death.
“I think it’s a fiction that people are sitting on assets,” said Natalie Kean, managing director of health policy for Justice in Aging, an advocacy group. “Homeownership is one of the most effective ways to build wealth, and we’re just discriminating and stripping lower-income families — and particularly communities of color — of the ability to build wealth and in the future not need to rely on Medicaid.”
