Without proper, strategic planning for Medicaid qualification, the sad reality is that already cash-strapped families will face enormous hospital and nursing home bills on behalf of loved ones in need, and they will likely lose everything in the process. Lets face it: Most of us have no vast fortune to fall back on when a medical crisis strikes a loved one. As a result of poor planning, the real tragedy accordingly occurs when entire family legacies are stripped away - sometimes within a few short months or even weeks - because an elderly loved one falls into the zone of nursing homes and exploding hospital costs for catastrophic care. As a highly qualified Medicaid Planning Specialist of more than 15 years, I have run into this type of tragedy time and again. Yet, I have never lost the passion to prevent it, given enough time for advance planning, or to stop the Medicaid destruction cycle in mid-stream.