In the spring of 2025, Idaho’s Medicaid eligibility office was processing a backlog of long-term care applications that stretched nearly four months. That context matters, because it was inside that backlog — buried under paperwork, disputed credit records, and a fraud case that had not yet been resolved — that Glenda Womack was trying to get her 74-year-old mother the help she needed.
I met Glenda through a mutual friend at a neighborhood barbecue in Boise last August. Our friend mentioned, almost offhand, that Glenda had been dealing with a situation involving her mother’s care and some kind of identity fraud. I asked if she’d be willing to talk about it. She agreed, though she was quick to say she didn’t think her story was particularly remarkable. That instinct, I’d learn, was very much part of who she is.
A Caregiver Who Didn’t Think She Counted as One
When I sat down with Glenda Womack at a coffee shop near her downtown Boise office, she arrived in a blazer, ordered black coffee, and apologized for being three minutes late. She is 47, a single legal secretary who has worked at the same firm for eleven years. She earns approximately $68,000 a year — enough to be comfortable, not enough to absorb what was coming.
Her mother, Dorothy, began showing signs of cognitive decline in early 2024. By July of that year, a neurologist had confirmed early-stage dementia with significant mobility limitations. Dorothy could no longer live alone in her Nampa home. Glenda moved her into a memory care facility in Boise that September.
The facility cost $3,200 a month. Glenda had researched Idaho’s Medicaid long-term care program and believed coverage, once approved, would bring her mother’s out-of-pocket share down to a manageable level. What the program documents didn’t spell out clearly, she told me, was how long the gap period would last — or what it would cost while she waited.
When Identity Theft Entered the Picture
The Medicaid application process in Idaho requires applicants — or their authorized representatives — to submit extensive financial documentation. For Dorothy, that meant bank statements, Social Security award letters, property records, and verification of any assets transferred in the previous five years. Glenda, as her mother’s power of attorney, handled all of it.
In October 2024, while pulling together those financial records, Glenda discovered something wrong with her own credit profile. Three fraudulent accounts had been opened in her name — two credit cards and a personal loan — dating back to early 2023. The total fraudulent balance was approximately $23,400. She had no idea they existed.
The fraud hadn’t touched Dorothy’s finances directly. But it had affected Glenda’s own financial profile at a moment when she was trying to demonstrate, on paper, that she was a reliable and organized caregiver-representative. When the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare requested supplemental verification of Glenda’s financial relationship to her mother’s estate, the timing of the fraud dispute complicated things considerably.
Navigating Two Systems at Once
For the next several months, Glenda was running two parallel processes: disputing fraudulent accounts through the three major credit bureaus while simultaneously managing her mother’s Medicaid application. She filed fraud reports with the Federal Trade Commission through IdentityTheft.gov and worked with each creditor individually to have the accounts removed.
At the same time, she was attending to her mother’s daily needs — visiting the facility several evenings a week, managing Dorothy’s prescriptions, and handling the legal paperwork that comes with being someone’s power of attorney. She was doing this while working full-time.
According to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, standard processing times for long-term care Medicaid applications can range from 45 to 90 days under normal circumstances. Cases requiring supplemental review or additional verification can take considerably longer. Glenda’s took just over seven months from submission to approval.
The Gap That Doesn’t Show Up in the Brochure
One thing Glenda kept returning to in our conversation was the difference between what Medicaid covers in theory and what it actually covers once you do the math. Even after Dorothy’s application was approved, the program did not eliminate her out-of-pocket costs — it reduced them.
Dorothy’s approved Medicaid benefit covered approximately $2,300 of the facility’s $3,200 monthly rate. The remaining $900 fell to Dorothy’s own income — her Social Security benefit of roughly $1,100 a month — with a small personal needs allowance retained for Dorothy herself. On paper, that worked. In practice, Glenda said, additional medical costs, transportation, personal items, and co-payments on Dorothy’s prescriptions consistently pushed the real monthly number higher.
Glenda never asked her mother’s facility for a hardship accommodation or a payment plan. She handled the shortfall herself, month after month, without telling her employer or most of her friends. When I asked why, she paused for a moment before answering.
What the Process Actually Cost Her
By the time Dorothy’s Medicaid was approved in April 2025, Glenda had paid roughly $22,400 out of pocket covering the months before approval — a period during which no retroactive reimbursement was available. She had also spent dozens of hours managing the fraud dispute, filing documentation with the Idaho DHFW, and corresponding with creditors.
Her credit score, which had been in the mid-700s before the fraud was discovered, dropped to approximately 611 at its lowest point during the dispute process. It had recovered to around 680 by the time we spoke last summer, but she said she still felt the effects when she looked into refinancing a small personal loan.
The fraud accounts were ultimately removed, and no money was taken from Glenda’s own accounts. But the time and cognitive weight of managing both crises simultaneously — she described it as “carrying two fires at once” — left a mark that doesn’t appear in any ledger.
Where Things Stand Now
As of early 2026, Dorothy remains in the same facility. Her condition has progressed, as dementia typically does, and Glenda said a recent care assessment may prompt a review of her Medicaid level of need — a process that could either confirm her current coverage or lead to a reassessment of what the program covers going forward.
Glenda has placed a credit freeze on her own accounts through all three bureaus and signed up for a monitoring service. She said she checks her credit report more often than she probably needs to, but she’s not willing to be caught off guard again.
When I asked what she would say to someone just starting the Medicaid long-term care process for a parent, she thought for a moment and gave an answer that stayed with me.
Glenda Womack is not someone who describes herself as a victim of anything. When I thanked her for her time as we wrapped up, she made a point of saying that her mother was well cared for, that the system had ultimately worked, and that she knew plenty of people who had it much harder. That might be true. It might also be the thing she tells herself so she can keep showing up.
What her story documents is something that gets lost in the policy language around programs like Medicaid long-term care: the gap between approval and enrollment, between theoretical coverage and actual costs, and between a program that works in the end and the people who absorb everything it doesn’t cover while they wait. For families like Glenda’s, that gap has a dollar amount. It has a credit score. It has a face.
Related: A Bank Teller Had a Plan for Retirement. Then His Wife’s Hidden Debt and Social Security’s Ticking Clock Upended Everything.
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