My husband and I have no children and are aging. Between property we own and our retirement savings, our net worth is over $1 million. We are debating estate planning, especially creating a trust to ensure Medicaid eligibility in the event we need long-term care. This is very common where we live. I feel, however, that this is morally wrong, placing the burden of my care on taxpayers to save my assets. My husband feels if it can be done legally, he would be remiss in not ensuring our future. What do you think? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
You sound as if you think you’d be slipping something past the authorities. Not so. Consider how the details of Medicaid eligibility, as determined by state and federal laws, have been adjusted over the years. When you spend down your assets, transfer them or place them in a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust within the five-year look-back period, you generally trigger a penalty period that must elapse before you qualify for Medicaid benefits. There are complicating details, and it’s notable that a few states have a shorter look-back period for certain Medicaid services. New York, for example, plans to adopt a 30-month look-back period for at-home long-term care (it currently has none), while residents of California can now qualify for the state’s Medicaid program without any asset limits. These are specific policy decisions that legislators make; the point is that the estate planning your husband is contemplating is commonplace and accounted for in the way the system is funding.
But you’re not really saving your assets. For these purposes, your trust has to be irrevocable, and if you can use or control those assets, it isn’t. Advocacy groups worry about elderly people who have been forced to drain their assets in order to get the long-term care they needed — and then finding that they couldn’t afford to repair the furnace. The real scandal here is that you evidently have reason to worry about not being able to afford health care in old age, long-term care being a notable gap in Medicare coverage. In a decent society, preparing for the routine infirmities of age shouldn’t require extraordinary measures.
A Bonus Question
I’m a college professor who also takes classes thanks to a tuition benefit. I was recently experimenting with multiple A.I. apps and decided to use the topic of a group presentation as a test case. While some apps are known for generating unique new language with every use, not all do that, especially the ones that are designed to function more like search engines. On one of those platforms, I found a word-for-word script of what a team member had passed off as his own work in a group presentation. This isn’t plagiarism, because the words were not taken from another person. The professor did not have an A.I. policy, which our school identifies as a best practice but not a requirement. In terms of my own academic integrity, am I in the clear to let this go, or do I need to report it? Should I confront my classmate? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
You don’t seem to think this incident was covered by your college’s academic-integrity policies, but at the heart of such policies is the insistence that students present work that is their own and acknowledge their sources. Whatever the syllabus said, your fellow student was surely violating the professor’s expectations by taking a presentation off the internet. More to the point, if the presentation was meant to contribute to the participants’ grades, your classmate was cheating — knowing where the material came from would have affected the professor’s evaluation. And, by not actually doing the work of creating the presentation, your classmate was deprived of the educational benefit of the task.
Many colleges have honor codes that require you not only to refrain from cheating but to report any cheating you know about; they can run into trouble, because students are inclined to think that snitching is itself dishonorable. Is there anything to be said for this attitude? Depending on the circumstances, there may be a case for regarding snitching with some ambivalence. Because our explicit, articulated moral discourse tends to be individualistic, it gives short shrift to values such as loyalty. But loyalty — along with trust and a sense of community — isn’t easily reconciled with snitching, where someone gains power over a peer by enlisting an impersonal and punitive agency. At the same time, we all know that silence can sometimes protect and sustain pernicious behavior. (When we approve of the disclosure, of course, you’re not a snitch or a narc; you’re a whistle-blower.)
What about this case? The classroom ethics of A.I. isn’t complicated — it’s all about transparency — but plainly the collective process of norm-setting is still underway. I’d be inclined to tell your classmate what you found out, in a nonconfrontational way, and make the point that we do ourselves a disservice when we skip the work that helps us learn. Though you’re his classmate, you’re also a professor, so those words will probably come better from you than from a contemporary. And if you’re struggling to find them? Clearly there’s an app for that.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was anxious about billing mistakes. He wrote: “Three times in the last month I have been the beneficiary of administrative errors that, if they stand, will save me thousands of dollars. I’m a bit pinched financially at the moment and would like to think it’s the gods smiling on me, but I wonder about my ethical obligations. Situation 1: We receive gas and electric services from the same utility company. The most recent bill showed only the electric charges and said that the gas account had been terminated, with no explanation. But we’re still getting gas, free. … Do I need to inform them of their error? Situation 2: For the second time in the last year, our landlord has not cashed our monthly rent check. The first time I reached out to let her know, and she said she couldn’t find it, and I sent a new check. … How many times am I obliged to correct their oversight on this? Situation 3: I mailed my car-registration renewal to the D.M.V., and the check was sent back with a note that said they couldn’t locate that registration. The next day I received the new registration. But the check for $194 was never cashed.”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “You’ll have to ask a lawyer about the legal implications here, but the ethical situation strikes me as pretty straightforward in each of these cases. You owe the utility company for the gas you’ve used, whether or not you were sent a bill. An honest person would alert them to their screw-up. You owe your landlord the rent. An honest person would point out that she failed to deposit your check. And the same goes for the D.M.V.: An honest person would tell the department that your check hadn’t been deposited. A good starting place, in other words, isn’t the question of what your duties are or what the consequences will be; it’s the question of what kind of person you want to be. … Because these errors are not your fault, you should not have to pay for them. You shouldn’t, for example, have to pay any interest or penalties associated with a delinquent payment. All the same, transparency will serve you best. However tempting it may be to coast on your creditors’ mistakes, you don’t want to cash out your character.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I agree with the Ethicist’s reply. The debt is still owed even though the checks have not been cashed. If you live from paycheck to paycheck, you always want the checks to be cashed immediately to confirm the amount left for food, kids, gas, etc. The letter writer should keep the amount owed in his checking account. — Rebecca
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Two years ago, the D.M.V. sent me my car’s new registration. I assumed my payment had gone through. Turns out, I had mistyped my bank account on the D.M.V.’s online payment form by one digit, yet they still sent me a confirmation email and issued my registration anyway. I learned of my error only months later when I received a late-fee bill of more than $270. I tried to contest it with them but, long story short, I didn’t win. Most expensive typo ever. The letter writer should follow up. — Betsy
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The letter writer must keep accurate and detailed notes about his interactions with each of these payees. I also suggest that he put aside the funds he may eventually be charged. — Judith
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On its most basic level, the Ethicist’s response to the question is, of course, correct — it’s a pretty straightforward issue. But I think the letter writer is onto something more intangible: How much of his time and effort should go into correcting administrative errors and laxness on the parts of others in order to ensure the payments are received? After a certain reasonable amount of effort, doesn’t their shortfall offset the letter writer’s ethical responsibility? The letter writer has met his contractual responsibilities (i.e., made the gas meter available and availed the payment based on the agreed-upon payment modality); he has made arrangements for his bank to reliably mail the rent check, etc. The letter writer is not contractually obligated to engage in additional follow-up measures to ensure the receiving party has done their part. The logical end to the Ethicist’s position is that in order to meet his ethical obligation, the letter writer should not stop until payment is confirmed as received by the lax parties. Seems like there should be an ethical obligation-calibration variable built into the equation. — S.
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I want to thank the Ethicist for his response. The question of what kind of person you want to be is one that too many people and institutions in our country have lost sight of. — Deborah
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