It totally sucks. Such a rip off. I am pretty sure these facilities make a fortune, Plus, so many of the facilities are depressing. I am sorry you are dealing with this. It’s a good reason to have children. I have no kids, and I will be at the mercy of the staff wherever I wind up if I outlive my husband.
My aunt was able to get Medicaid and have an aid come to the house, but she did not need memory care, she needed physical help for part of the day. NY is better than some other states. She was able to give her money to my sister and me (around $100k total) and then we created a pooled trust for her. AS long as money went through the pooled trust she could get the Medicaid, It is a crazy system. It was all above board, we disclosed everything to Medicaid.
The only reason we knew how to do it was because my sister was connected in the healthcare system. My mom had given some money to a lawyer to help us with it, but it was $5,000 just to get started, and my sister freaked out, and we had to threaten the lawyer to get our money back, but we actually did get it back.
Other states it is much less than $100k, you have to spend down almost everything to qualify, which is pretty scary.
As @jca2 wrote, people with money start giving their kids tax free money and creating trusts and all sorts of way to avoid a look back and keep the money in the family. Even the middle class people gift their money to their kids once they hit a certain age to spend down. I think it is around $15k per person, which means each parent, can give that each year tax free. Plus, the estate exemption is something like $12 million per person now, so maybe parents can actually give millions to their kids before they die tax free and just account for it, I am not sure of that last part, and then if it is more than a certain amount of years before filing for Medicaid the money is possibly excluded from any sort of look back.
Seeing a lawyer for a will and advice on legally hiding your money when you are young is the cheapest way to take care of it. The lawyers prey on people who are already older.