Do-It-Yourself Death Panel

How you feelin’ today, mom?

How you feelin’ today, mom?

Federal law allows states to recover Medicaid costs from heirs. This little known provision is getting more attention as part of the debate over Medicaid expansion. The Wall Street Journal (New Wrinkle for Health Law) wrote a balanced article about it, highlighting consumer fears about having to sell assets while also sharing the government perspective that “estate recovery helps shore up the program for others who need it.”

The online comments and letter to the editor generally support the view that recipients’ estates should have to pay back the government. The letter (First, Estates Should Repay the Taxpayers) is characteristic of the righteous indignation provided by the commenters.

Where is it written that a person is entitled at death to leave assets to children, particularly after someone else, in this case the taxpayers who fund Medicaid, has paid the health-care bills? Where is it written that children are entitled to inherit assets from a parent who has unpaid bills for services received during his or her lifetime?

Maybe if the issue were framed differently the commenters would rethink. Two points in particular:

• If we seek to reclaim Medicaid payments we need to reclaim Medicare payments as well. Although recipients pay into the system, Medicare is far from self-sustaining. More than 40 percent of Medicare spending is financed from general revenues.
• If the government starts going after estates for medical expenses more broadly, dying patients will worry that heirs will ration care to preserve their own inheritances. And with so much at stake, it’s not a paranoid thought

So here’s my question for the commenters and letter writers: Are you willing to expand this logic to Medicare and provide your own heirs with an incentive to form a death panel for you?

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