[nneonneo]

If you do need single quotes in the inner command, you can use the "'" trick:

    ssh host -- ls "'"'folder$name'"'"

[me-vs-cat]

$name will never be expanded. Is that what you expected?

[nneonneo]

Yes, that’s the intent: using single quotes at both levels will prevent either your shell or the remote shell from expanding the name, so you can interact with a file name containing a literal $.