Crain Bill Seeks Lien Relief
Tulsa senator’s bill addresses Medicaid property liens
BY WAYNE GREENE World Senior Writer
Monday, February 18, 2013
A Tulsa state senator is pushing a plan to break a legal and financial logjam that has the blighted homes of former Medicaid clients standing empty and sucking away at county revenue.
Senate Bill 292 – proposed by Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa – instructs the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to release its Medicaid liens on any blighted properties that are being sold for unpaid property taxes.
“This helps the counties, it helps the school and it helps the Medicaid recipients,” Crain said.
Medicaid liens are a means of allowing nearly indigent Oklahomans who are elderly or disabled to get Medicaid funding for nursing homes stays, but a consequence is that the liens tie up the property financially after the patient dies.