MassHealth Finally Implements “Brave Act” Protections For Veteran

A letter to the editor from Patrick Curley:

On August 9, 2018, Governor Baker signed the BRAVE Act into law, which improves and expands the benefits available to the Commonwealth’s veterans, active military members, and their families.

For Veterans the big change is in how MassHealth treats their pension income. For decades, MassHealth has incorrectly treated VA enhanced pensions (the most common is known as the “Aid and Attendance” benefit) as “countable income” for purposes of calculating eligibility for MassHealth benefits and for determining what income a beneficiary may keep while on MassHealth benefits. Federal law, however, has long provided that VA enhanced pensions based on medical need and not purely on low income are not countable income for purposes of determining Medicaid benefits.

Unfortunately, MassHealth (the state program offering federal Medicaid benefits) would not budge off its incorrect interpretation of the law, thereby harming veterans and their widowed spouses.

To right this injustice, I and other Elder Law Attorney members of the nearly 500-member Massachusetts Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (MassNAELA) strategized how best to force MassHealth to disregard VA enhanced pensions to better protect our Commonwealth’s veterans. We drafted a bill and spent years building bipartisan support in the Massachusetts legislature.

The law became effective on November 7, 2018, but MassHealth failed to implement the law. This caused some disabled veterans or their widowed spouses to be denied MassHealth benefits (or offered reduced benefits) they otherwise would have been entitled to under the BRAVE Act had MassHealth timely implemented the law.

On July 15, 2019 – more than nine months after BRAVE Act became the law in Massachusetts – MassHealth relented and finally implemented the new law, which will improve access to and benefits under MassHealth for veterans and their families.

Section 28 of the BRAVE Act adopts the language of MassNAELA’s bill, which mandates that MassHealth disregard “the entire amount of a monthly payment to a veteran or a widowed spouse of a veteran, including pension, aid and attendance and housebound benefits, from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs if the veteran or widowed spouse would not have received such a payment from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs but for unreimbursed medical expense.”

Veterans and their widowed spouses seeking more information about the new law and its impact on their MassHealth benefits or eligibility should contact their local Veterans Services Officer affiliated with each town, or with a qualified Elder Law Attorney.

Patrick G. Curley, Esq., Certified Elder Law Attorney