Metro

Medicaid rich irony

He’s a soon-to-be millionaire — and he wants Medicaid benefits.

Manuel Alberto Martinez Fernandez, 53, will inherit a portion of a $10 million payout that the Libyan government awarded him for his father’s death in a terrorist attack in Israel in 1972.

Fernandez, who lives in Midtown, is ineligible for health insurance because he suffers from “depressive disorder,” his Manhattan Supreme Court filing states.

So he wants the court to put his inheritance in a trust in order to make him eligible for government-funded health care. Otherwise, he fears, the funds would be “substantially dissipated” if he has to pay out of pocket.

His father, Manuel Enrique Martinez Rivera, of Puerto Rico, was killed in a shooting at Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport.

So far, Fernandez has $400,000 of his inheritance in an escrow account, according to the lawsuit. The US State Department handles the distribution of the settlement.

Fernandez did not answer calls to his apartment.

A spokesperson for the city’s Human Resources Administration, which oversees Medicaid benefits, declined to comment on Fernandez’s case, but said that inheritance only determines eligibility if it generates income.