You asked (1) if the income limit for Medicaid eligibility for a single person is $ 477 per month and if so, when it was last changed and (2) whether the legislature has tried to increase this limit.

The Medicaid income limit for an aged, blind, or disabled single person living in the community (called the medically needy income limit) is $ 476 per month. It has not changed since 1990. Federal law ties the limit to the cash welfare benefit the state pays an “assistance unit” (in this case, a unit of one person) and the legislature has not increased these benefits since 1990.

The income limit for a single person applying for nursing home care is much higher—up to the monthly cost of nursing home care. Once eligible, the recipient turns over his income (except a portion to pay for personal needs) to the home to offset the Medicaid costs.

Without raising the cash welfare benefits, and knowing it cannot change the medically needy income limit (MNIL), the legislature has tried to address the issue by raising bills to increase the Medicaid program's unearned income disregard. (States are permitted to disregard a portion of a Medicaid applicant or recipient's unearned income (e. g. , Social Security). While these bills ultimately failed, a bill that required the unearned income disregard in the State Supplement Program to be indexed for Social Security cost of living adjustments (PA 05-243) resulted in raising the limit for community Medicaid (to $ 703 in 2007) since the two programs are related.

Some legislators believe that the adjusted MNIL is still too low and have proposed bills to raise the limits further. A recent OLR report (2007-R-0006) discusses two possible ways to increase the MNIL. One would be to create a separate income disregard, which would apply only to medically needy community Medicaid recipients. The other would be to create an optional Medicaid coverage group for aged and disabled individuals with income up to 100% of the FPL.

OLR report 2004-R-0554 explains the MNIL and what happens when income exceeds the limit.

RC: ts