One of the effects of Obamacare is expansion of medicaid to people of somewhat higher income than previous. It was *supposed* to provide health care for the desperately poor; now it covers up to 138% of the poverty level. Still poor, but perhaps well enough off that even though your income sucks, you might have accumulated some property… a car, a house, a million Hummel figurines, whatever. Normally you might expect to pass these on to your heirs. Ooops! Not anymore!

Washington state, for example, has had an asset “recovery” system in place to bill dead people of the cost of the Medicaid they’d consumed. But up till now, the income standard was so low that only the truly poor would have been on Medicaid, so they wouldn’t have anything for the state to seize. now, though, there’ll be people with stuff actually worth taking.

Is this wrong? Not really… if you consume a product or service, you really should pay for it, and being dead does not absolve you of your bills. For anything else in life, if you’ve racked up a stack of bills and then keel over, your creditors can dip into your estate. What’s new here is that there just might be a whole lot of folk who are not only mourning dear Granny’s departure, but coming to find out that the few trinkets and doodads she had left for ’em in her will now belong to the state.

“If you like your inheritance, you can keep it.”

Expanded Medicaid’s fine print holds surprise: ‘payback’ from estate after death

The article says that the Washington state legislators are scrambling to “fix” this. But it also suggests that this is an unintended consequence. Riiiiight.