MEDICAID IN FLORIDA Part I
Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • June 11, 2024

Medicaid planning is a complicated concept with many moving parts, all of which need to work in tandem and cohesively together to achieve the goal of providing quality long term care and/or nursing services to a Floridian in need.


People often merely state that Medicaid is always a payor of last resort, but that expression needs to be defined and discussed as part of an over-all plan.


The first issue addressed, then, is what is meant by “The payor of last resort?”


Medicaid is, indeed, the payor of “last resort.”  Briefly, this means, when all other medical assistance care is gone, Medicaid may step up and help pay for some uncovered medical expenses.


Although Medicaid is a Federal program, it is administered on a State-by-State basis. When Medicaid was first being created, each state in the Union submitted their own plan on how the funds available to their own State’s Medicaid applicants. Florida submitted its plan which continues (with some tweaks) as to be used by Florida’s Medicaid system.


If the applicant (the “patient”) otherwise qualifies for Medicaid in Florida, the State’s Medicaid program will help pay the expenses of Long Term Care, including Nursing Home Care.


So, if the patient has a privately purchased policy for Long Term Care Insurance, those benefits will have to be fully depleted before Medicaid will provide any financial help.


If the patient has more than $2,000.00 in “countable assets,” those will need to be spent before Medicaid will help. (We do mean “spent,” too; not gifted away!)


If the patient is on Medicare, Medicare will step back and no longer pay once Medicaid has taken over.  This means that the patient’s Medicare premium will no longer be deducted from any Social Security payment, increasing the net income of the patient.


Further, there will no longer be a need for supplemental health insurance since the policy (Medicare) which was being supplemented, no longer is paying.


When good planning has been implemented, including, at times, some of the countable assets of the patient having been legally and permissibly transformed into uncountable assets, Medicaid will step in to help pay for the Long Term Care Nursing Home expenses. 


This is what is meant when the term “payor of last resort” is used.


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The time for using unregulated Lady Bird Deeds might be ending.

By By Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • September 24, 2026
The time for using unregulated Lady Bird Deeds might be ending.

MY MOTHER, THE GRAMMAR TEACHER, WOULD BE SO PROUD: We Have Our Own "Comma" Case

By Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • July 22, 2026
One of the most absurd things for law students to grasp in that all-important first year, is the idea of what can be considered "ambiguous." (Ambiguity is "an uncertainty of meaning or intention, as in a contractual term or statutory provision.") If language is deemed "ambiguous," what happens next depends on where this ambiguity is found. The ambiguity can be subject to interpretation of a Court - if it is in a statute. If the Court has to use interpretation, there are several tools they can use to derive meaning and intent from the writers of the statute. This search for "Legislative intent" is sometimes easy if there is a part of the statute stating specifically what the Legislature was trying to do. Without that, however, judges will look at what the plain and simple language would mean. If that does not help, then they can look at the surrounding language, the other terms, what might be excluded, what would make the language harmonious with the other laws on the topic... All kinds of factors are examined to determine what the law is trying to say. However, if the ambiguity is found in a contract, the options are different and depend on whether the ambiguity is an obvious mistake ("Art is the Buyer" and then, later "The Buyer, Bert" is written in the same contract) or whether it is a more sneaky ambiguity. Here is where the comma comes into play. The Tariff of 1872 misplaced a comma, resulting in fruits not being subject to the tax. The tariff was trying to say that fruits and fruit plants would be subject to the tariff, but, by placing a comma where it did not belong, fruits become tax free and only fruit-bearing plants were subject to the Tariff. Another is a case where there would be no overtime payments for work done for "...drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution" of foods. Because there was no comma between "shipment" and "distribution," the Court found it questionable if "shipment and distribution" were one joint act or two separate ones. The result? Workers got their overtime payments. Now, we have a case, decided July 22, 2026 by our appellate court, that a comma found between "construed according to the laws of the State of Florida" and "with venue in Collier County," created an ambiguity allowing venue to be set in another County (Martin). The comma controlled and there is an ambiguity, allowing the action to be filed in Martin County, rather than Collier. The benefits of filing in one county verses another, well, that would be an entirely different article.  Just remember: Watch those punctuation marks folks! Ambiguities may be found everywhere!