“What is the Alabama Medicaid look back rule?”
“What is the Alabama Medicaid look back rule?”
With Medicaid, the look-back rule says if you are in a nursing home now and you’ve gotten your assets down to the right level, then you qualify for Medicaid.
But Medicaid’s going to look back in time five years.
Medicaid looks back and it asks, “Did you give any gifts? Did you give something away completely? Did you sell something for half its value?”
If you did, then Medicaid’s going to total those up then divide them by a number to get a penalty.
Right now the number is $5,800 divided into the amount of the gifts.
This will give you the number of months Medicaid will penalize you on the future.
The point is that the “look-back” in time is in the past and the number of months of penalty goes forward in time.
You take the total amount of gifts and divide by $5,800 and that’s the number of months that you have to pay out of your pocket.
To qualify for Medicaid, you have to have very, very low assets.
This means that, as a practical matter, the family is going to have to pay for that penalty period.
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We represent families all over Alabama.
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