In a major change in Medicare policy, the Obama administration has provisionally agreed to end Medicare’s longstanding practice of requiring that beneficiaries with chronic conditions and disabilities show a likelihood of improvement in order to receive coverage of skilled care and therapy services. The policy shift will affect beneficiaries with conditions like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, heart disease, and stroke. For decades, home health agencies and nursing homes that contract with Medicare have routinely terminated the Medicare coverage of a beneficiary who has stopped improving, even though nothing in the Medicare…
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There are many planning devices of which families can take advantage to avoid having to go through the probate/ administration process. Most of them are relatively simple. For example, your bank accounts can pass outside of probate simply by putting a POD (paid on death) or TOD (transfer on death) designation on the account. Once you have a POD or TOD on the account the money will go to the designated person(s) upon the presentation of a death certificate to the bank. Each bank has its own procedure for doing this so please check with your financial institution for their…
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There are a number of decisions to be reached when planning for your estate and not least among them is the choice of executor. A poor choice of an executor, or a disconnection between executor, estate, and beneficiaries can hobble even the best laid of estate plans. Indeed, Reuters offers one unfortunate beneficiary’s troubles in a recent article on the topic and offers some solid suggestions to consider. The beneficiary was Stephanie Stephens, who, in the end, was surprised to find that the estate she received had shrunk by $129,000, something she angrily blames on the executor. Apparently, the estate…
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