(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Legal-Ease - Gerald W. Townsend)

As the old year closes and the new year begins, most of us take a look at where life stands after the passing of a year.

The year 2025 was interesting and 2026 promises to be even more interesting in the realm of Elder Law and Medicaid Planning.

The facts haven’t changed.

We are getting older. At age 80 I’m one year ahead of the first wave of official Baby Boomers. I feel them pushing me toward old age. Many of my age-peers are dead. Younger acquaintances have retired. Fifty-six years ago, when I first started practicing law in Parkersburg, I attended bar association meetings and wondered, “Who are all these other lawyers?” Fifty-six years later, I again ask the same question, only now the ones I don’t know are decades younger than I.

Being 80 in 2026 is scary in an America where the government’s Big Beautiful Bill will cut over $1 trillion from federally funded health care this year alone. Common sense dictates that losing such a huge amount will result in major health care changes. States will not be able to make up the loss. To survive, medical providers, including hospitals and nursing homes, will have to cut services and/or increase costs to us consumers.

As we get closer to needing hospital and nursing home care, we don’t want the fruits of our life’s labor wiped out by those expenses. We don’t mind helping to pay our way, but we don’t understand why, in the world’s richest nation, the middle class is at such risk. The truly poor and truly rich (and members of Congress) don’t have to worry about medical/nursing home costs. The middle class are who will have to spend themselves into poverty and lose their homes when faced with medical/nursing home care costs.

Some say that the cost of universal government funded medical/nursing home coverage would be prohibitive. No doubt it would be great, but really, isn’t it an issue of priorities, of where our nation chooses to spend our wealth? I wonder how far the billions we spend on war, ballrooms, tobacco, farm, and other subsidies, foreign aid to other countries, and on pork-barrel projects would go toward financing such care.

For those of us in health care and Elder Law, 2026 will challenge us to develop plans to save your assets from medical and nursing home costs based upon inevitable, but not-yet developed nor implemented law changes to cope with the loss of federal funding.

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Gerald W. Townsend is a partner in the Elder Law firm of Fluharty & Townsend, Parkersburg, W.Va. His practice focuses upon meeting the legal needs of seniors in West Virginia, with special emphasis upon protecting the home and life savings from the cost of nursing home care. He can be reached at jtownsend@fntlawoffices.com