Avoiding the Medicaid Trap: How to Beat the Catastrophic Costs of Nursing-Home Care

This is a great book, but be careful of Medicaid rule changes that make some of the strategies unfeasible nowadays.

For the middle class - getting sick in your old age forces you into extremme state of humiliation. For years you worked to secure a retirement for yourself and your spouse - and than the cost of medical care - the parts that MEDICARE does not cover leaves you in a desparate situation. The medical costs are more than you can bear - you are responsible for your medical, skilled nursing, home care, ambulance service, prescription drugs etc. Paying these bills in a long term illness - impoverishes the spouse who is left after the debilitating illness takes the sick one's life. I have no objection that saved wealth would not be transferred to one's descendants - but a system has to be put into place that protects the spouse that remains alive. Mr. Armond Budish in this fine book - provides one legal and moral techniques to allow one the best opportunity to save a reasonable portion of one's wealth so that the surviving spouse does not end up totally destitute. in most cases the surviving spouse's health has taken a precarious toll in taking care of the sick seeing him or she waste away - and seeing the all-powerful state force one to spend one's resources down. For an individual who has worked and saved all his/her life refused welfare of any kind over those forty productive work years - to be treated so disdainlly by a cold bureacracy makes one wonder about the priorities or lack thereof in establishing a safety net for our senior citizens. If the money is taken by the state upon the death of the second spouse - that's fine. Children of hard working middle class citizens like myself should not necessarily be entitled to the redistribution of wwealth - but allow for and provide our seniors their share of the sun.