Sponsored with Massachusetts Chapter of NAELA

Date: Friday, October 15, 2010

Location: Suffolk University Law School, 120 Tremont St., Boston, MA
Time: 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM

Elder law attorneys have a unique opportunity to exchange ideas and tactics on issues emerging on the national, state and individual level at the Annual Northeast Elder Law Symposium. Plus this year, attorneys in the Northeast will gain a perspective on practice in Florida.

At the national level, much of the past year was consumed by the efforts to adopt health care reform. Learn how this new law provides opportunities for seniors to receive enhanced health care. A panel of representatives from each of the Northeast states and Florida will report on the most significant issues that have emerged in each state through legislation and administrative advocacy in the last year. A main focus will be on the expansion or limitation of benefits available to seniors through the Medicaid program. You will hear about how to tackle the challenges and dilemmas that arise when the dirty little secrets of abuse, exploitation and neglect seep out in communications between client and attorney and how to identify and address evidence of elder abuse.

You will also learn from a panel of experts who have experience “thinking out- side the box”, finding remedies to recurring problems when state agencies fail to follow federal law. The panelists will share their opinions of how to identify issues and prepare cases so that they can seek remedies which will both serve the client and change the policy through federal court litigation.

• How federal health care reform improved elders' access to health care and affected Medicaid long term care coverage.

• The successes that advocates have achieved in the Northeast and Florida during the past year that improve or expand eligibility for health care, particularly long term care.

• The new limits to access to health care, including restricting Medicaid eligibility requirements and expanding recovery that you need to be aware of.

• How to recognize evidence of elder abuse, especially financial exploitation, in an elder law practice. What’s an attorney to do, when and how?

• Do the same issues keep presenting in cases and resulting in a denial of fundamental benefits created by federal law? How to respond affirmatively with litigation. Make it a federal case! What litigation is pending; what has succeeded?