Is There Ever an Easy Medicaid Application? Part 4

In last week’s post I continued to tell you about a Medicaid application which our client characterized as easy but turned out to be not so much.  One check deposited into an account we were aware of, then led us to 2 other accounts in another bank that we had not been told about. 

But that didn’t end the search, however, because when we received the statements  for these accounts, we had to identify where all money deposited into and withdrawn from these accounts went.  Thankfully, there were very few transactions during the time the accounts were open so we were able to document those.  That left the opening deposits and the closing withdrawals.

The first account was opened before the beginning of our 5 year look back and it was closed and then deposited into the second account.  That left the withdrawal of the balance in the 2nd account when it was closed.  We went back to Jane’s family to get answers but they had no clue.

The closing balance was  $5500.  In the end we had to accept that we could not account for this money, resulting in a 1/2 month Medicaid penalty.  Not so terrible by itself.  The damage, however, was a bit more than that because in the time that we spent tracing all these accounts and transaction, 2 months went by.  Our original application was denied because we were “timed out” by Medicaid and when we refiled we could not get back our original requested Medicaid start date. 

Overall, Jane and her family were responsible to pay an additional 2.5 months at the private pay rate before Medicaid kicked in.  In the end, we were able to get Medicaid, but the application that the family thought was going to be a breeze turned out to be far from it.