Instead in Americans are extremely rigid about rules and norms. You never just “not worry” about “legal liability.” It’s a country where criminals can sue you if they injure themselves robbing your house. For the most part, this is a good thing. Americans will also never ask you for a bribe, like is typical in the third world country I’m from.
Medicaid is extremely stringent when it comes to income and asset thresholds for nursing homes (and in many states receiving social security can effectively disqualify you from Medicaid, even though Medicaid would be more helpful). So in many cases that public money is only applied once hospitals and nursing home facilities have plundered the estate of the soon-to-be deceased until the debt is paid or there is nothing left. Something as routine as old age will often wipe out any potential generational wealth building in all but the upper class.
I bring this up because I think this actually goes back to the original argument in the US that money does, in fact, rule everything. That's ultimately why Americans don't question their legal frameworks-- that's what guarantees the liabilities and debts and who keeps what in the end, not the other way around.
You see this all over the place. American schools will spend $50,000/year ensuring a child with dyslexia can get individualized educational support. But they won’t give free lunches to kids whose parents could technically afford them but don’t use their money wisely.
Going thru this now with my own elderly parents - I am perfectly OK with medicare ending up owning the equity left in their house, and meager other assets - to recoup money spent on their care - people should support themselves with whatever resources they have available, before taxpayers are asked to pick up the expense.
The thing is that death is a universal experience; Many, if not most of us, will end up needing some form of late-life care. Private insurance companies often won't cover what is ultimately inevitable. It would make sense for more of our public policy to aid in what is so common.
The average nursing home cost is $7k/mo. The average nursing home stay is 1-2 years. That's enough money to bankrupt most US families entirely yet comparatively little in the public budget. We spend _much_ more public money on incarceration every year.
But why shouldn't they be drained of their life savings if they move into a nursing home and need to pay for care? If they have the money - any money - that is only going to be left to their heirs, why shouldn't it be used to pay for their own care?
It is an honest question - why should I inherit money from my parents estate, and the taxpayers pickup the bill for their care? If they died today, and medicare didn't claw back from their estate, there would maybe be 200K that needs to be split 5 ways - why should my siblings and I get this 'windfall' and expect the taxpayers to fund their nursing home?
I honestly don't understand why this isn't fair.
As an ex fireman, in a so-called "3rd world" [1] country, we often got involved in fires "beyond our juristriction". Our job was to put fires out, not worry about insurance or legal liability etc. We were never reprimanded for doing so, and there was never a suggestion of anything other than gratitude.
[1] 3rd world was originally the term for non-aligned nations during the cold War. The West was the "first world" (obviously), the USSR was the second world, and the rest was the 3rd world.
Not surprisingly, since a majority of the unaligned countries were in Africa, South America and Asia, 3rd World became a perjoritive term for "undeveloped" or "backward".
If being "backward" means not having the "money rules everything" approach of the USA, then long may we remain backward.