HB 1142 – Life insurance & burial expenses in Medicaid

House Bill 1142 Conference committee passed the House. It’s apparently still pending in the Senate. It requires the division of family and children to pay funeral director and cemetery expenses incurred for an individual receiving or certified to receive certain public assistance. Gives the division a priority lien on the estate. Allows the state to use federal or state Medicaid funds to pay life insurance premiums for a Medicaid recipient or applicant who has assigned the life insurance policy to the state or made the state a beneficiary of the life insurance policy.

I have mixed feelings on the state paying life insurance premiums. I suppose it’s o.k. — basically the state is just maximizing an asset of the individual. Still, it has the stink of those dead peasant’s policies Walmart takes out on its janitors.