[crispyambulance]

I've been through similar experiences with my mother.

The best thing you can do, before your parent gets too old, is to consult with an elderlaw firm to get health care directives, wills and power of attorney written up. Most importantly, be sure to fully talk through the possible scenarios for what happens financially in the event of putting your parent in an SNF (skilled nursing facility).

Private pay for SNF in the USA is about $10000/month. That's a steep rate for middle class and even upper middle class folks. That's what your family will pay until medicaid "kicks in" when the savings of the parent are depleted. If your parent made the mistake of giving away part of their wealth to family within 5 years of entering SNF, that money still counts and they have to pay it to the SNF. The medicaid provider for your state will demand 5 years of bank statements for all accounts as well as query ALL financial transactions. You might have to hire a lawyer just to untangle the mess. Dealing with this stuff is a nightmare in paperwork at the worst possible time you can imagine.

I have found that face-to-face communication with the bureaucrats helps a lot. The HHS staff people who process medicaid long term care enrollments in SNF's have massive, soul-crushing workloads. Of course they're going to just skim the hundreds (not exaggerating) of pages of documents you send them. The article is right. You have to watch out for your family. No one else will do it.

Eldercare consultants cost several thousand dollars. We decided not to engage one because the SNF provided a lot of support and we had previously worked with an elderlaw firm, but it probably would have saved us some stress when dealing with medicaid/HHS as I was on the hook for $100K+ until a property sale from 4 years ago was sorted out. There are families that end up going bankrupt needlessly just because a parent wanted to "leave something" to their children and didn't know about the 5-year-lookback trap (Thank George W Bush for that fuck-up, see Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). We were fully aware of the basics and still narrowly averted a financial disaster.