Book Review: How to Protect Your Family's Assets from Devastating Nursing Home Costs: Medicaid Secrets

K. Gabriel Heiser. How to Protect Your Family's Assets from Devastating Nursing Home Costs: Medicaid Secrets. Phylius Press, Nashville, TN, 2009. 287 pages.

$47 from publisher (click here or on book to order).

Nursing home costs are expensive and keep going up. Medicaid will pay for nursing home care, but the program has very strict income and asset limitations. How to Protect Your Family's Assets from Devastating Nursing Home Costs: Medicaid Secretsprovides advice on how readers can qualify for Medicaid without losing all their assets.

Author K. Gabriel Heiser, an attorney specializing in elder care and estate planning, provides detailed and practical information on how Medicaid works and the strategies for qualifying for it. Very up-to-date, Medicaid Secrets includes the changes to Medicaid transfer rules made by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The 2009 third edition includes all changes in the law through Jan. 1, 2009. Heiser takes a complicated subject and presents it in an easy-to-understand manner. Medicaid law varies from state to state, so the strategies won't work in all states, but the book gives readers a broad overview and many ideas to bring to their attorneys.

The book begins by explaining what Medicaid's coverage of long-term care is and how to apply. The author provides detailed information on the income and asset qualification rules for both single and married individuals. The book then goes into strategies to qualify for Medicaid, including converting assets from countable to non-countable resources, making transfers to family members, entering into a personal services contract, using annuities, and changing a will in case a spouse ever needs nursing home care. There is also detailed information on estate recovery and several case studies. As the law changes frequently, the author's Web site will provide updates to the law and corrections to the book.

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