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NHS Urges Media to Educate Public About Misunderstood Medicaid Benefit Program
1 March 2004, 11:00am ET
GLENDALE, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Zoran K. Basich, an elder-care attorney and founder of NHS, LLC, one of the country's pre-eminent companies dealing with seniors and long-term nursing home care issues, today released this statement in response to information being promulgated by the Center for Long Term Care Financing, a nonprofit supported by the insurance industry.
According to the center's January 28, LTC Bullet, elder-care lawyers are engaging in "another taxpayer rip-off" by helping clients "qualify for benefits designed for the poor." The center advocates the notion that the only way the "affluent" (and that includes anyone above the poverty level) should have access to skilled nursing home care is to use a lifetime's worth of savings and other assets to pay for the care. In the alternative, the center encourages purchasing long-termcare insurance and/or reverse annuity mortgages.
"The problem with this approach is that it not only advocates a transfer of wealth from the middle class to some of the wealthiest and profit-conscious institutions in this county but it also takes us much farther down the slippery slope of privatization of all government benefits," says Basich. "This would leave the care of the most vulnerable among us in the hands of corporations relentlessly seeking the good of the bottom line, not those they serve."
The center's ideas recently received national attention in a Wall Street Journal February 23 article "Medicaid Maneuvers," which focused on the so-called pitfalls of Medicaid planning. Quoted as an expert in the article is the center's president Stephen Moses. It is not surprising that the center opposes Medicaid planning because its goal is to sell long-term-care insurance.
"What most people don't know is that workers have already paid into the Medicaid system," Basich says. "Long-term-care Medicaid is the most misunderstood benefit program in the country, and that affects millions in our elderly population. We hope the media continue to focus on long-term-care planning, giving equal time to those who actually fight for seniors and their families."
Zoran K. Basich has spent 25 years advising seniors and their families about their legal rights, entitlement to federal programs, asset protection and long-term nursing home care. In 1976, he co-founded Grey Law, a nonprofit legal assistance program for low-income California seniors. In 1991, he founded NHS to provide services for families facing health care crises. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer about health issues older adults encounter, and serves as an expert media source regarding seniors' legal rights to health care.
