Hi, my name is Christopher Lavin. I’m an attorney with the Lavin Law Group. We are an elder law firm here in Lebanon, Ohio. And a big part of elder law firm is benefits planning or crisis planning. And a lot of folks confuse the Medicare system with the Medicaid system. They can be confusing. They do overlap a bit. They do intertwine a bit and combine a bit.
But let me try and give you the cleanest definition I can think of. Medicare here is health insurance, hospital, doctors, rehabilitation. Medicaid is long term care. Medicaid traditionally provides anything that Medicare does not. Now, why it gets confusing is we have a lot of folks that enter a nursery or enter hospital for a particular purpose.
And they’re there for a number of days. They’re discharged to another hospital or care facility for rehabilitation. And a lot of folks will say, well, my health insurance covers that long-term care because I know I get a certain amount of days for rehab. And you do it can be 20 days without question. Add up to an additional 80 days if you can show improvement.
But it’s not automatic. There’s an additional 80 days. And that can be a shock to the person or the family. So Medicare will help you through the rehabilitative process, but there comes a step where we do what, I hate this word, but what the health care folks call youth plateaued. You’re not getting any better. That’s when Medicare stops, and we either go to private pay or Medicaid.
I try to brace the clients for that phone call because it shocks the system. You’re told that if you want to continue this care or stay in this facility, you must drop a big check off by the time you get off work today and your head spin. So we know that we will have to progress from Medicare or Medicaid for men in many situations.
Don’t be afraid of Medicaid. Just know that that’s available.