Here are some quotes from the story “They could lose the house — to Medicaid”

Fran Ruhl, a retired child care worker, was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a debilitating brain disorder. Instead of placing her in a nursing home, the family cared for her at home. A case manager from the Area Agency on Aging suggested in 2014 they look into the state’s “Elderly Waiver” program to help pay expenses that weren’t covered by Medicare and Tricare, the military insurance Henry Ruhl earned during his Iowa National Guard career.

(Daughter) Coghlan still has paperwork the family filled out. The form says the application was for people who wanted to get “Title 19 or Medicaid,” but then listed “other programs within the Medical Assistance Program,” including Elderly Waiver, which the form explains “helps keep people at home and not in a nursing home.”

Coghlan says the family didn’t realize the program was an offshoot of Medicaid, and the paperwork in her file did not clearly explain the government might seek reimbursement for properly paid benefits.

Some of the Medicaid money went to (daughter) Coghlan for helping care for her mother. She paid income taxes on those wages, and she says she likely would have declined to accept the money if she’d known the government would try to scoop it back after her mother died.  The NPR article can be found here.