Gordon Crause has had quite a life.

He misses it every day.

Back then, back in Louisiana, when he was a bounty hunter for bail bond companies with his brother, Daniel, he chased bond jumpers across every continental state but Idaho. There were drug dealers, debtors skipping bills, petty crooks, rapists and drunk drivers who failed to appear for court.

There was the man who issued a bad check for $15, skipped out on a $500 bond, and stabbed Crause in the butt with an ice pick when the Cajun native came to pick him up.

There was the guy who Crause knocked out with a flashlight. Not with the weight of the instrument, but by shining the beam in the man’s eyes as he was sprinting away.

“He ran into the damn tree,” Crause said. “Ain’t my fault.”

If you can get a social security number, he said, there’s always a paper trail, and the trek begins.

“It was a blast,” said Crause, 53, of his 26-year bounty hunting career. “It was the best job I had in my life.”

Fast forward, and Crause is fully disabled, a recipient of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, living in an $86,000 home he bought from his father off North Cecil Road in Post Falls.

It’s that home, sitting on half an acre, he wants to save for his three children. He doesn’t want Medicaid to put a lien on it, which is what it will do once Crause turns 55.

•••

Once Medicaid recipients turn 55, the provider can put a lien on a recipient’s property as a way to pay back taxpayers, who ultimately fund the medical assistance.

In Idaho, the state doesn’t recover much for what it put out, according to officials, because most Medicaid recipients don’t own assets. In fiscal year 2012, the state recovered $8.1 million, compared to the $1.8 billion budget.

“That’s federal, not an Idaho thing,” said Tom Shanahan, public information officer with Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, on the rule that several elder law attorneys agreed catches many Medicaid recipients unaware. “The idea is to reimburse the taxpayers, basically.”

On Feb. 22, Crause will turn 54. A year from then, Medicaid will start tracking his medical bills.

Crause said he feels like he’s on the clock.

He’s considered dropping Medicaid, and relying on Medicare, but he won’t be able to afford to pay the increased co-pay on medical bills like hospital visits without Medicaid, he said.

He lives off $1,500 a month. That will drop to $1,000 once his youngest son, in high school now, is no longer a dependent, he said. As it is now, he’s down to less than $100 a month to live on after bills are paid out.

He can’t afford a medical change, so he’s prepared to take a medical gamble by dropping Medicaid and keeping his house.

“I just wouldn’t go to the hospital,” he said. “I would lay here and die. That’s my children’s” house.

•••

How Crause became a recipient of Medicare and Medicaid is a story by itself.

He says he has been involved in 41 car accidents, 35 of which he was riding as a passenger.

The latest one that he counts was a tiny fender bender he had around two months ago on Cecil Road and Mullan Avenue in Post Falls.

A young lady dinged his car, he said, so he counts it.

There was no damage, and police didn’t get involved, so there wasn’t an accident report at the Post Falls Police Department.

But there is a report filed in U.S. Middle District Court of Louisiana detailing a major accident at 2:50 p.m. on May 21, 1998, at the intersection of Airline Highway and Winbourne Avenue in Baton Rouge.

It was there, as Crause, driving, was waiting at a red light, when government worker Burney Thompson “recklessly slammed” his Chevrolet Corsica “into the rear of Crause’s vehicle,” court documents state.

“I remember everything,” Crause said, saying Thompson never slowed down before the impact. “I saw him coming in my rear view mirror and I knew he wasn’t going to stop.”

Around six weeks later, Crause said was riding as a passenger with a co-worker on Airline Highway again, near the intersection of Prescott Road, when he was hit again as they pulled out of a McDonald’s parking lot.

The accidents left him with severe neck and back injuries, which required, among others, two fusions, four disks, and three titanium cages in his lower back. For the pain, he takes a variety of medication — hydrocodone, oxycodone, xanax for anxiety, soma — as well as medication for blood pressure, acid reflex, and diabetes. He takes injections for pain in his shoulders, and anger management classes to emotionally control his temper that flares from the hurt.

He has several doctors, and named his cat ‘Puff’ after his favorite, Dr. Steven Puffer in Sandpoint.

Of all his wrecks, he calls the ones on Airline Highway the “big ones.”

He said he was unaware of how many accidents he’d been in until the federal government tallied that he’d been in 33 accidents as part of its defense in the 2000 court case.

Today, he tallies 41 accidents. Of the six he was actually driving, he wasn’t at fault, he said, except for the three he was in while wheeling a motorcycle.

“Dinking around, slipped on oil,” he said of one of those wrecks, where he crashed off the road and smashed down in a field.

Remarkably, he doesn’t feel unlucky or cursed on the road.

“There are people who have had more wrecks,” he said.

Maybe.

If all 41 accidents held up, Sara Wilcox, public relations and marketing assistant with Guinness World Records NA, Inc., said the famous record tracker doesn’t count a car-wreck category, so she couldn’t say where Crause’s status would stand.

“Not sure if this would be the most,” she emailed The Press.

Meanwhile, Crause’s civil suit following the 1998 accident was settled out of court in February 2002, according to court records. Crause said he was left with around $79,000 after medical bills and lawyer fees were paid out.

He said he wished he had saved the money, but he was too foolish at the time to think he couldn’t work as a bounty hunter forever, and not worry about saving for the future.

“Why? Because I was stupid. I thought I was invincible,” he said. “I never put two and two together and said, ‘Listen man, you’ve been in a boat load of wrecks ... ’”

But he remembers the doctor telling him before surgery after the “big ones”: “In my 23 years as a doctor I’ve never seen a back so (bleep)-up as this.”

“It’s that bad,” Crause said. “I need to unscrew my head and put a body on it.”

•••

Accidents aside, the medical window in which Crause finds himself isn’t unique just to him.

While supplemental insurance policies are typically available for people once they 65 year or older, Dave Irwin, director of communication for AARP Services Inc. — which offers supplemental insurance — said 30 percent of people who are enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid are in the same 10-year window as Crause.

What makes Crause unique — at least statistically — is that he’s on Medicaid and owns property.

While Medicare provides for people who are disabled, Medicaid is a health provider for people with low incomes. Low-income Medicaid recipients typically don’t own property, Shanahan said.

And while options are out there to keep a home for people in Crause’s position, elder attorneys said the Medicaid lien rule does seem to surprise those who fit the category’s criteria.

“This is something our practice sees quite a bit,” said Katherine Coyle, associate attorney with Wytychak Elder Law, in Coeur d’Alene.

Wytychak Elder Law office specializes in legal services related to the issues that face senior citizens and their families.

While getting care is a must, the thought of losing a home for it “can be a tough pill to swallow,” for people, she said.

“Of course it’s their desire to leave a legacy with their families,” she said.

Crause said he’s been denied all options to pick up supplemental or Medicare Advantage insurance plans should he drop his Medicaid because he’s not 65. His balance of prescription medication can’t be altered either, he said, which is why he didn’t pursue help through Veterans Benefits Administration in Spokane. He said they wanted to change is medication plan.

One way to lessen the liens is if Crause gave his house away.

He could give it to his children now either in full, or through a divided life estate, said Alan Wasserman, Coeur d’Alene attorney with Idaho Legal Aid Service.

Of course, there would be tax ramifications with that, Wasserman pointed out. And in a divided estate, Medicaid would still put a lien on the recipient’s portion, just not the kids’, So it would still have possession of a portion of the property after the recipient passes away.

And Medicaid also has a five-year look-back period, where it looks at the value of some gifts and deducts the amount of the gift in services costs.

So for bigger gifts, that can amount to months or years of not having long-term medical care paid for, which becomes a sort of high-stakes property and health gamble for those involved.

The catch, Coyle said, is that the property quagmire usually affects people in the middle. Wealthy people can afford supplemental insurance, while poorer people tend not to own houses. It’s the few in the middle it affects.

That risk of not taking Medicaid is what Crause is weighing. He’s looking into gifting his home to keep it in the family, while keeping the coverage. While his old life was exciting, he’s looking ahead.

Accidents aside, stories of bounty chases aside (which even wound up in Mexico, because “there’s a way to bring ’em back,” as Crause described), Crause said many people are in his boat.

There shouldn’t be a gamble for people in that 10-year window, he said. He wants to keep his house and coverage. He can’t avoid the hospital until he’s 65, when he would be sure to pick up supplemental insurance. If he tried, it’s a gamble he’d said he’d be certain to lose.

“Come on now,” he said about the chance. “You wanna go and take a ride with me?”