Nursing homes can't demand stimulus money from Medicaid patients: FTC
Seniors across the country are being told to hand over their checks.
Some nursing homes and assisted living facilities appear to be falsely claiming that Medicaid patients must hand over the stimulus checks recently issued to them by the federal government, the Federal Trade Commission warned on Friday.
The FTC said it's received complaints from officials in Iowa and elsewhere about Medicaid patients being told to sign over their checks. These patients are being told that the checks are considered "resources" within the federal benefits program.
"This isn't just an arcane hypothetical someone has dreamed up. The Iowa Attorney General's Office and other State AGs have received boots-on the-ground reports this is happening," the FTC warned in a blog post.
An FTC spokesman said that the agency is still gathering information about the complaints.
Lynn Hicks, a spokesperson for the Iowa AG office, said the attorney general intervened after one local nursing home sent its residents a letter warning them not to plan on spending their stimulus checks because they belonged to the nursing home. Hicks said that after the owner was contacted, the company agreed to send a new letter to residents telling them they could keep the money.
"Our office and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman are informing nursing home residents and their families that stimulus checks will not be counted as income and will not disqualify Medicaid beneficiaries from nursing home care," Hicks said in a statement to ABC News. "However, if the stimulus money is not spent within 12 months, it may be counted as an asset and could affect future eligibility."
Under the law that has provided "economic impact payments" to millions of Americans, known as the CARES Act, the cash assistance is deemed a tax credit. The FTC said tax credits do not count as a resource for Medicaid, the government-run health care program for low-income and disabled Americans.
"That means that nursing homes and assisted living facilities can't take that money from residents simply because the resident is on Medicaid," the FTC stated.
The FTC is now encouraging consumers to report any attempts to take these checks away from citizens, to their state attorney general's office and then report it online to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint.
