Editorial Standards
and Sources.

Editorial standards

Every page is about Medicaid planning for long-term care: paying for nursing-home or other long-term care, eligibility, assets and income, a spouse who lives at home, the family home, trusts and transfers, applications and appeals, and estate recovery. Pages give general information, not advice about any particular situation.

Articles are written from research and official sources gathered for each topic, and they pass the checks described below before they are published. A page that fails a blocking check is not published. Each article shows the date it was last updated.

Medicaid research methodology

Sources are used in this order of authority:

1. Federal law and federal guidance: Medicaid.gov and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and federal statutes, read from the official text of the United States Code.
2. The state’s own Medicaid agency (in California, the Department of Health Care Services, which runs Medi-Cal).
3. The state’s statutes and regulations.
4. The state’s official Medicaid manuals, eligibility guidance, bulletins and forms.
5. Court and administrative decisions, where relevant.

Secondary sources, such as other websites, may help with research but never decide what a page says about a rule where an official source exists. Each article lists the sources it relies on, with links, at the end of the page.

State law and eligibility source standards

• A state’s rules come only from that state. What a state counts, exempts, limits, penalizes, recovers or requires is stated only where that state’s own official text says it. A federal rule, or another state’s rule, is never presented as a state’s rule. Where a state’s sources are silent on a point, the page says the point depends on that state’s current rules instead of filling the gap.
• Figures that change are kept with their dates. Figures such as asset and income limits and allowances for a spouse change over time, so they are recorded with the source they come from and the date or year they apply to, and stated with that date or year where the source gives one.
• California. Medi-Cal’s rules have changed materially in recent years. Statements about current California rules rely on current guidance from the Department of Health Care Services and on California’s own statutes.
• No local presence is implied. No page presents an office in any state, or a licence in any state other than the reviewing attorney’s California licence.

What is checked before publication

• Citations. Statutes and other authorities an article cites are looked up in their official sources, and case citations are checked against CourtListener, a public database of court opinions. A citation that cannot be found stops publication.
• Other pre-publication checks. Among them: that required disclosures and structured data are present, and that no unfinished placeholder text remains.
• Second review. Each draft is read a second time and possible errors are flagged. A flag is acted on only after it has been checked against the source text; a flag alone does not change a page.

Attorney review

Content pages name their reviewing attorney in small print at the end of the page. The checks above apply to every page.

The site’s own pages

The site’s own pages (the home page, the state index, this page) state no state’s rule and no figure. Where they mention a rule at all, it is in general terms that hold in every state, such as that the rules differ from one state to the next.

Corrections

To report an error, email info@medicaidplanningattorney.com with the page address and what you believe is wrong.

Not legal advice

Pages are general information about Medicaid, not advice about any particular situation or a decision about anyone’s eligibility. See the Terms of Use.