SSI and Care Home Payment

[egremont]

My question involves insurance law for the state of: New Jersey

A longish post, and probably not the right place to post,so firstly, my apologies
A year or so ago, a dear friend of mine was ill (and still is).
During the course of this long illness and hospitalisation, a few things happened to her. Some of them very nasty indeed.
She was deemed, by a lawyer, to have become incomptent for just as long as it took to get all her monies, and distribute them to whoever he thought was a priority to recieve them.
He obviously thought her health insurance wasnt a top priority, so that didnt get paid and therefore her insurance was cancelled, and they no longer paid her hospital bills. She went on Medicaid from then on.
The hospital she was in then turned very sour on her and her few remaining extended family members (a sister-in-law and a neice)
The eventual outcome of this is that she was placed in a County Government run nursing home by her family. BTW, she is only 61 and now shares her days with senile dementia patients, Alzheimers sufferers and so on. With virtually no contact with the outside world, except for a visit every so often from her now "retreating back into the woodwork" family, and a cell phone that has to be topped up to get any minutes of use. I think she gets 250 minutes per month and is expensive per minute. And a very flaky interenet connection that wont allow her to connect to much..not even yahoo or the like
Once in there, lo and behold, she was then found to be compus mentis once more, would you believe??
While all this was happening, her rented apartment "evicted" her and all her posessions, including her car were disposed of, leaving her with literally the clothes she had on her at the time of her first admittance to hospital.
While she was in the original hospital, she put a claim in for SSI (Not bad for someone deemed incompetent, huh!!!!)
This took time, but was eventualy granted, and any entitlment she had from the time she made the claim to present day was recently awarded to her. Quite a considerable sum. As she also had her bank acount closed (LONG story in itself!)
She has to wait until a debit card gets to her.
This not so wonderful care facility are telling her that, as Medicaid know she has all this cash, they stopped paying them. So they are now looking to her to give up this cash to them !!!
The care home loosely arranged a meeting with her to discuss the situation. This was kept in limbo. Now, however she has been furnished with a bill fom Medicaid and the care facility, plus a letter from Medicaid stating she owes ALL of this SSI back payment to the care facility she is in. Whats worse, the figure stated is $900 more than this SSI payment due to her cashing in a life insurance policy so she could eke out some sort of existance where she is now.
This is much needed by her to rebuild her life, as she is, through guts and determination (and some physical therapy as well) getting to the stage where she can apply to be "returned to the community" as these people so glibbly put it.
I know this next part is very unethical, and even immoral to suggest to her but.....what would be the likely outcome, if she were to say to this care home that she was keeping all this SSI payment to try and rebuld her life after she is released from there, and that they wont be getting a cent of it?
From what i am learning SSI and suchlike cant be garnished, so what would the likely actions be by the care home should she suggest to them that possesion is nine tenths of the law?

Regards
Egremont

[Mr. Knowitall]

This not so wonderful care facility are telling her that, as Medicaid know she has all this cash, they stopped paying them. So they are now looking to her to give up this cash to them!

If she is no longer eligible for Medicaid because she's sitting on a pile of cash, she is no longer eligible for Medicaid. If she wants to remain in a facility that was formerly paid by Medicaid, but for which she is now responsible for the payment of bills due to the discontinuation of Medicaid, she will need to pay her bill or move. And yes, if Medicaid has a claim against her back pay for services it provided to her over the period covered by the back pay, it can assert a lien. If Medicaid recouped that money from the facility by deducting the amount from its current payments, and has instructed her to pay the debt to the facility, then that's what Medicaid did.

If, truly, this is a private debt to the facility, and she is moving out (she can't reasonably expect that she'll be allowed to remain in residence if she's refusing to pay them the money she owes), she can hoof it over to a bankruptcy lawyer's office and see if she can discharge her debt to the facility instead of paying them the cash. It looks like the cash exemption for bankruptcy would be $11,200.00 for a single person. She should not expect that the facility will again accept her as a resident.