Veteran may stay in home

[MADem]

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=156380&c=87&PHPSESSID=08b8f3c156a1695094e48105ca80e618


CARTERVILLE, Mo. - A Vietnam War veteran who feared the state might seize his parents' home to recoup medical expenses may not lose his house after all, according to the state attorney general's office.

Gene Sharp, 57, had been bracing for a struggle after the state indicated it might take the property to defray Medicaid costs incurred by his late parents. Sharp, a disabled veteran, has been living at his parents' house for the past 10 years.

But when Sharp's parents enrolled several years ago in Medicaid, a program that pays for medical assistance for the indigent, they acknowledged that the state might advance a claim to their home to absorb some of those medical costs. Sharp said he received a letter to that effect last month, about one year after his mother died and 15 months after his father died.

But a federal law bars any state from seizing a home if the late owners' children still live there and are disabled. Sharp is 100 percent disabled and relies exclusively on a monthly check of about $850 from the Department of Veterans Affairs for income, he said.

[oneighty]

1. If he is

one hundred per cent service connected he should be getting $2,429.00 a month from the VA plus a social security disability payment.

Edit

He would also be eligible for home care possibly housing assistance and so on.

If he is non-service connected dis-ability the $850.00 sounds high, when I was caught up in that system it was only a few hundred dollars.

Either way good luck to him.

180

[FloridaPat]

2. The worst part of this is that the govt can come in and take everything

to pay for Medicaid costs they've given over the years. Think about that. Everyone assumes Medicaid is part of SS. We pay taxes for it. It was suppose to be in trouble. But after the patient dies, they can come in and take everything. Why is no one upset about this?