Sunday, December 12, 2010

Full Wallets, but Using Health Program for Poor


NYTimes

AFTER immigrating to New York City from China in the 1970s, Z. Y. Tung and his wife worked hard — he as a bank manager, she as a public school secretary — lived frugally and saved every penny they could for the next generation.

Until five years ago, when his wife, Wen Mei Hu, racked by bone-marrow cancer, had to be put in a nursing home, where the bills ran past $100,000 a year, threatening to quickly drain the couple’s life savings of $500,000. The nursing home told him not to worry: If he signed a document essentially refusing to support his wife of several decades, Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the indigent, would pick up the bill.

“What about me, because I am responsible?” Mr. Tung inquired. He was told that only millionaires had to pay such high costs, and reluctantly, seeing no other choice, he agreed. [...]

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