A federal district court rules that the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services cannot continue to count the first $90 of Medicaid waiver recipients' VA pension payments when determining their post-eligibility incomes. Ledford v. Colbert (S.D. Ohio., No. 1:10-cv-706, June 18, 2011).
Four Ohio women who receive Aid and Attendance benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as well as Medicaid services from the state through a community waiver program sued the state, claiming that it was violating their due process rights by improperly counting the first $90 of their Aid and Attendance benefits as income when it calculated their patient pay amount under the waiver program.
In April 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio certified the class in the case, and both parties then filed motions for summary judgment. The plaintiffs claimed that 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(r) requires a state to exclude the first $90 of Aid and Attendance benefits from all post-eligibility income calculations. The state replied that the statute applies only to residents of state veterans’ homes or to veterans without spouses or children.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio grants the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and orders the state to disregard the first $90 of pension income for all Medicaid waiver recipients dating back to October 2010. After noting that the statute in question “is not a model of clarity," the court goes on to find that Congress specifically added language to 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(r) that partially exempted VA pension income for Medicaid waiver recipients, regardless of where they live and regardless of whether the person receiving the pension has a surviving spouse or child.
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