WASHINGTON >> As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago.

So, Sandy LoGrande, 57, thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue for his home if she didn’t pay up quickly.

There was a settlement.

The bill was part of a routine process the federal government requires of every state: to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid. A person’s home is typically exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. But it is subject to the estate recovery process for those who were over 55 and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care.

This month, Democratic lawmaker Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois proposed scuttling the “cruel” program altogether.

— The Associated Press