No one is guaranteed an inheritance folks! If someone racks up thousands of dollars in medical expenses and nursing home bills, and they have assets that could have been used to pay for those things, then the taxpayers are actually the ones who are getting stuck if Medicare doesn’t seek reimbursement!
Years ago, when I was in banking, I had a woman who came to my desk in tears. Her mother had fallen and needed surgery and rehab and she had no idea how she was going to pay for it. I looked up the mother’s account and told her that there was a 100K joint CD. I thought she would be incredibly relieved but instead she went into a full hissy fit - “That money is for ME when my mother dies...I’m not spending my inheritance to pay for a bunch of medical bills! The government should have free insurance and nursing home care for people like my mother!”
People - there is no such thing as a free lunch! There are more problems with Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare than any of us can list in one post but asking people with assets to cover their own expenses is not a bad thing!
I find it baffling that so many people here on FR would complain about this, when the reality is that without government-run health care most of the people mentioned in these articles would probably have died long before they ever reached this point. LOL.