Medicare Coverage in Nursing Homes — A Broken Promise

Elderly citizens and their concerned offspring incorrectly assume that Medicare coverage surely makes them eligible for care in a nursing home when the need eventually arises. There is a good reason for this assumption — after all, the Medicare pamphlets distributed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS; formerly the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, HEW) state that should hospitalization be followed by a need for nursing-home care, Medicare can provide up to 100 days of benefits.1 Although it is clearly stated and generally understood that there are minor impediments to these benefits (e.g., a stay of . . .