Medical Divorce

If you haven’t yet, please read Nick Kristoff’s column on his friend M’s divorce. To make a long story short, her husband was diagnosed with early-onset dementia which made it predictable that over the course of the years he was going to need a great deal of long-term medical care. In the American health system, a family with those kinds of health care needs can get the government to pick up the tab via Medicaid, but only if it burns through all of its assets first. So M was advised by social workers, medical professionals, and attorneys alike to divorce her husband, thus being able to shelter assets earmarked for her kids’ future from the coming medical maw.

In a decent system, everyone would pay a bit more in taxes and nobody would wind up facing that kind of decision. And note that in the end the government winds up picking up the tab for extreme medical scenarios anyway.