By Judith Graham “Don’t resuscitate this patient; he has a living will,” the nurse told the doctor, Monica Williams-Murphy, handing her a document. Williams-Murphy looked at the sheet bearing the signature of the unconscious 78-year-old man, who had been rushed from a nursing home to the emergency room. “Do everything possible,” it read, with a check
By Greg Iacurci The cost increases, approved by regulators in the second quarter, affect roughly $160 million of in-force premiums Genworth Financial Inc. received approval from state regulators this year to raise costs an average 58% on some long-term-care insurance policies, affecting tens of millions of dollars' worth of annual insurance premiums the company receives from consumers.
By WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE It may be possible in the future to screen patients for Alzheimer's disease using an eye exam. Using technology similar to what is found in many eye doctors' offices, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have detected evidence suggesting Alzheimer's in older patients who had no
By Shaun Hunley There are no fewer than 130 new tax provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to Shaun Hunley, a technical editor of PPC products for Thomson Reuters Checkpoint in the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters, but with tax practitioners starting to focus on helping clients address the act’s impact, he
Trustees of special needs trusts generally have wide discretion in determining whether to distribute funds to trust beneficiaries. But if the person with disabilities receives Supplemental Security Income (SSI), careful precautions should be taken before any trust funds are used to pay for housing costs. For the year 2018, federal guidelines set the maximum monthly SSI benefit at $750
A promissory note is normally given in return for a loan and it is simply a promise to repay the amount. Classifying asset transfers as loans rather than gifts can be useful because it sometimes allows parents to "lend" assets to their children and still maintain Medicaid eligibility. Before Congress enacted the Deficit Reduction Act
By Adam Shell, USA Today For most working Americans, the savings vehicle of choice is a 401(k). But a flood of retirement savings dollars moving from these employer-sponsored plans to IRAs suggests that retirees or workers nearing the end of their careers favor individual retirement accounts when it's time to tap the cash they've amassed. Older Americans
Medicaid law imposes a penalty period if you transferred assets within five years of applying, but what if the transfers had nothing to do with Medicaid? It is difficult to do, but if you can prove you made the transfers for a purpose other than to qualify for Medicaid, you can avoid a penalty. You
Employee retirement savings plans come in two main flavors: the traditional 401(k) and the Roth 401(k). The benefit of a Roth 401(k) over a traditional 401(k) after retirement is that distributions from a Roth 401(k) are tax-free, but there is a little-known situation where distributions can be taxed. Contributions to a traditional 401(k) are made
Planning for retirement and deciding whether to buy long-term care insurance would be a lot easier if you knew your odds of needing long-term care, as well as at what age and for how long. Unfortunately, there's no definite answer. On the other hand, some statistics do provide a bit of guidance. The Numbers In
