Medicaid Estate Recovery Collections

In September 2005, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) published a report on state Medicaid estate recovery. Since the 1993 enactment of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA 93), federal law has required states to recover Medicaid spending on behalf of beneficiaries from their estates after death. This issue brief summarizes the estate recovery mandate, discusses variations in mechanisms employed by states to implement the mandate, and presents a state-by-state analysis of collections from 2002 through 2004.

. . .