Probably much of the $80,000 income is coming from stocks, bonds, rental properites, etc.
Could be. Not necessarily. (I always think of of "wealthy" as about accumulated wealth, not income. I assume that Medicare does it the way it does because those are the data available to it.)
One of the things I find so curious about this is that you can have little enough income in my county to qualify for a senior break on real estate taxes but have to pay the "wealth" premium on Medicare. I qualify on both counts. Isn't that weird? And then there's this:
"Nursing home care costs in the U.S. Northeast have averaged $76,800 annually in 2002. Just like other health care costs, the cost of nursing home care continues to rise at an alarming rate, with projected annual costs in 2010 reaching over $123,000."
So you'd need more than $100K in gross income to pay for that 2002 nursing home.
But, on the bright side, when you go to that nursing home, there's no further use for that break on the real estate tax :/
The reason I harp about this is not that I'm complaining about my personal situation. I'm not. I'm just finding myself a good example. I think this means testing business is to contradictory and too anomalous to be valid. It feels really, really weird to qualify for a means-tested poverty program on one hand while paying a means-tested premium on another. |
