Regarding the March 18 front-page article, “Medicaid offices target dead people’s home,” the article points out that the federal government currently requires states to estate-recover expenses for nursing homes and other similar care classified as “long-term care” like in-home health aids.

What many don’t know is that, in Massachusetts, people also have to worry about estate recovery from some of the ordinary health coverage that they get when they apply at the Massachusetts Health Connector every year. Specifically, for periods when people have an annual income up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level when they apply for their standard annual health coverage at the Health Connector (regardless of how much in assets they have), the Health Connector will not offer them subsidized on-exchange health plan, but will instead give MassHealth as standard or ACA “expanded” Medicaid.

Though Massachusetts is not required under federal law to estate recover expenses for these Medicaids, it chooses to do so for people 55 and over. (Potentially, it may recover all medical expenses paid out — the person then really had no insurance, only a loan until death for medical expenses.) As the article states, there are recommendations for Massachusetts to fix the problem by having Massachusetts cut back its estate recovery to the federally required minimum. What it doesn’t state is that our own state Sen. Jo Comerford has submitted a state bill, S.726, that would do just that. Let’s thank Sen. Comerford for that important bill, and let’s hope that it passes.

Norman Spier

Easthampton