Federal Rule on Medicare Savings Programs Will Cut Red Tape for Older Adults and People With Disabilities

(See Table 2.) However, states can and should implement the required and suggested streamlining policies described in the final rule as soon as possible to increase access to health care and reduce costs for older adults and people with disabilities. [...] 13 The estimated cost and time savings of the final rule are part of the agency’s regulatory impact analysis, which is a required component of the rulemaking process so policymakers can assess the rule’s relative burden and benefits. [...] The final rule requires Medicaid agencies to accept an MSP applicant’s attestation of the value of the following types of income and resources: burial funds, non-liquid resources, the face value of whole life insurance, and income from interest and dividends.17 States may (but are not required to) collect additional documentation to verify what the enrollee attested to after enrollment. [...] States are required to follow up with the enrollee if the information they attested to is not “reasonably compatible” with what the state finds in data sources.18 This policy lessens the paperwork burden of enrolling in MSPs by reducing requests for information that can be difficult for people to obtain during the application process. [...] In addition to requiring states to align household size definitions, CMS also encourages states to fully align financial eligibility between MSP and LIS in the final rule by allowing states to disregard income and resources including in-kind support and maintenance, income from interest and dividends, non-liquid resources, life insurance, and burial funds up to $1,500 (and an additional $1,500 for.