Tag Archives: MLTSS

The QIT requirements in New Jersey are a minefield – tread carefully!

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The Medicaid program that pays for long-term services and supports (MLTSS) for nursing home care, assisted living and home care services is available for applicants whose income is less than the cost of care, as long as their resources (assets) don’t exceed the prescribed limits. We still hear from clients that they’ve been told that “you can never apply for Medicaid because your income is too high,” even though the income is well below the cost of that nursing home. That false information has led people down the wrong path more times than I care to count. The fact is that since 2014, if the person’s monthly income exceeds a certain limit ($2,313 in 2019), s/he can still apply for NJ MLTSS-Medicaid, but the procedure for turning over the monthly income is different (and more complicated) than it is for the basic “categorically needy” Medicaid program. A specific kind of income trust has to be set up by the applicant. It’s called a QIT – Qualified Income Trust. The Trust has to be established before the Medicaid application is filed.

Each month, the entire amount of an income source that makes the income exceed the “income cap” must be deposited into the QIT. Often the applicant will decide to just transfer all income each month into the QIT. From there, the Trustee has to disburse it in a particular way: for the Personal Needs Allowance (PNA); health care premiums; support of spouse if applicable; certain other authorized deductions; and the cost-share payment. Home care participants must turn over the excess income to the State of NJ – they don’t get to use it to pay for their care. Nursing home residents must turn over the excess to the nursing home. QIT Template      QIT_FAQs

So why is this a minefield? Every week we learn of things that went wrong for our clients in the handling of these QITs, leading to denials of applications. Now, I have been told by certain Medicaid supervisors that the applicant should inform the caseworker if they encounter a problem with a QIT (such as “the income didn’t arrive this month”) or should amend the Trust to solve a problem, but there might be many weeks if not months before the applicant even knows who’s handling the application or knows that a problem with the QIT exists. If the repair occurs, there’s no assurance that it will apply retroactively to the time of the application, leaving the nursing home resident and their spouse exposed to staggering unpaid nursing home bills. The mechanism tor report a problem to a caseworker isn’t always known, and it’s frankly unclear that a caseworker even has authority to accept a post-facto revision to a QIT.FUrther, I have been advised by certain county representatives that there is no obligation on the County Board to alert the applicant that they have spotted a problem with the QIT funding that should be corrected; the applicant may not realize it until months down the roada when a rejection is received.

So, forewarned is forearmed.   Here’s a list of things that regularly occur and regularly cause problems in the application process.  To try to avoid these problems, anyone handling the income of an MLTSS Medicaid applicant needs to be exquisitely familiar with the intricate requirements of the QIT policies, and needs to be extra-vigilant to make sure they are doing it all “by the book.”

#1 The QIT information published by the State never specified whether the net or the gross income amount should be written on the QIT trust document, but if the trust document lists the gross amount of the income rather than the net, the amount of income being deposited into the QIT won’t match the trust document, and the trust would be “incorrectly funded.”

#2 If the income arrived in the checking account late in the month and couldn’t be transferred into the QIT until the following month, the QIT would be “incorrectly funded.”

#3 If income doesn’t arrive at all in a certain month due to an administrative snafu with the payor, the QIT would be “incorrectly funded” or “underfunded.”

#4 If the trustee of the QIT fails to disperse all of the income in the month of receipt, there will be an excess, unallowable balance sitting in the QIT on the first day of the next month, leading to possible excess resources.

#5 If the Trustee uses the QIT for impermissible expenditures, the QIT may be regarded as invalid.

#6 Some applicants think that they can keep up to $2,000 in the QIT because there is a $2,000 resource limit for MLTSS. This is not correct. The QIT has a specific purpose – handling the income. It isn’t the general discretionary resource which the applicant may retain and enjoy.

#7 The Power of Attorney document might not authorize the Agent to establish any kind of trust, no less a QIT. If the applicant is incapacitated, it may be impossible to establish the QIT without getting a court order, which could take months. This creates a problem in the application process and a request for a hardship waiver needs to be made.

#8 The Judgment appointing a Guardian may not include anything authorizing the Guardian to establish a trust. As with the Power of Attorney problem, it will be impossible to set up the QIT without filing an emergency court petition. Again, this creates a problem in the application process and a request for a hardship waiver needs to be made.

#9  As noted, the excess income above $2,313 has to be turned over to the State as a cost-share by a home care MLTSS recipient. While the application is pending, this money has to just accumulate. There is concern about whether this creates a risk of having excess-resources.

#10 The income is deposited into the applicant’s bank account before it is transferred into the QIT, and auto-debits for insurance premiums are automatically taken out of that account because the applicant hasn’t yet switched them over to the QIT. The person handling the income for the applicant therefore transfers less than the full amount of the income into the QIT, since the insurance premium was already taken out it “those funds” from the other account. The deposit to the QIT therefore doesn’t match what’s written on the trust document. This situation has to be carefully explained in the application,  because if the wrong amount of dollars is transferred into the QIT for dispersal, the QIT will be deemed “incorrectly funded,” leading to the problems discussed above.

Forewarned is forearmed! Preparation of a Medicaid Eligibility Plan is complicated, with many moving parts, and is not just a matter of collecting and submitting a pile of records. Take care to get advice  so as to avoid the minefields when entering the battlefield of MLTSS applications.

Call us for asset preservation strategies and Medicaid applications & appeals …. 732-382-6070

New Jersey Court rejects denial of Medicaid benefits where spouse refused to cooperate

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When a married person applies for MLTSS Medicaid benefits, the applicant must provide 5 years of records pertaining to all financial activity of the applicant and their spouse. The applicant also must supply proof of the spouse’s current income and assets. Sometimes, the spouse just refuses to cooperate with the process, creating a dilemna for the Medicaid applicant. In some circumstances, the couple is actually estranges and not living together. Sometimes the spouse actually resides out of state – the couple is still married, but they live separate and apart. In other circumstances, it’s a second marriage and the children of the community spouse don’t wish to cooperate with the process. And sometimes, they live together and the spouse just refuses to produce the evidence. Whether willful or otherwise, the situation is referred to as having a spouse who refuses to cooperate, sometimes called “spousal refusal.” Unlike some other states, New Jersey did not adopt a specific regulation concerning what to do if the spouse refuses to cooperate. However, there is an explicit provision in federal Medicaid law that says that benefits cannot be denied if the applicant has assigned to the State all of the rights he has under state law to support by his spouse, or if denial of benefits would work “an undue hardship.”  In fact on a Medicaid application, the applicant has to sign just such an assignment of rights. The federal law is at 42 U.S.C. § 1396r-5(c)(3)(A)  and (c)(3)(C).

The federal statute says:  “42 USC 1396r-5(c)(3). Assignment of support rights. The institutionalized spouse shall not be ineligible by reason of resources determined under paragraph (2) to be available for the cost of care where—

(A) the institutionalized spouse has assigned to the State any rights to support from the community spouse;
(B) the institutionalized spouse lacks the ability to execute an assignment due to physical or mental impairment but the State has the right to bring a support proceeding against a community spouse without such assignment; or
(C) the State determines that denial of eligibility would work an undue hardship.

A recent case illustrates what can happen in a case where the spouse of the Medicaid applicant simply refuses to cooperate with the process due to disability or emotional distress. N.S. v. Div. of Med. Assistance & Health Servs., N.J. Super. App. Div. (per curiam). NS was 87 and had moved to a nursing home. His 86 year old wife was the community spouse. His daughter was his legal guardian, and she did not have a close relationship with her stepmother. Six written demands for information were sent to NS’s wife, which she didn’t answer, and in 2 personal visits she told NS’ guardian to just stop asking about all of that because “it was causing her stress.” He asked for the hardship waiver based on his wife’s refusal to cooperate.

In this case, the county board of social services refused to approve Medicaid without the records from the spouse, and refused to apply this federal requirement. Evidently the state’s “policy” was that at a minimum, the spouses had to be estranged from one another. A fair hearing took place, and substantial evidence was placed in the record concerning the efforts made to get information and the refusal by the community spouse . Nonetheless, the Administrative Law Judge sustained the county board’s denial, and the state Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (DMAHS) issued a Final Agency Decision adopting that recommendation. However, the appellate division reversed, holding that that decision was arbitrary and capricious and disregarded the evidence in the case record. The decision was “not approved for publication,” which means it is instructive but is not precedential or binding on other courts.

P.S. There is some interesting discussion at the end of the case (see page 18-19) regarding demands for information that didn’t exist and that had been reasonably explained by N.S.’s guardian in correspondence to the caseworker. For more on THAT type of problem, see our post here.

Call us for representation on Medicaid eligibility planning, asset preservation, fair hearings and appeals ……… 732-382-6070

Spousal Impoverishment Protections in Medicaid Home Care Program Help All Ages

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NAELA has been at the forefront of keeping the Spousal Impoverishment Protections in the Medicaid Home Care Program (HCBS) that were included in the Affordable Care Act.  So far, with great effort, it’s working.

It’s important for disabled people who are under 65 and who meet the nursing facility level of care to recognize that these protections are out there. The “level of care” standard is generally thought of as needing assistance with three of six of the basic ADL’s, called activities of daily living. The disability community worries a lot about the “marriage penalty” in SSI, and this is a real and legitimate concern.  But in New Jersey, if it’s homecare that’s preeminent, marrying your significant other should not necessarily prevent you from keeping your Medicaid/MLTSS benefits.  Spouses are allowed to keep certain exempt assets, and all of their income from working and other sources, without affecting the Medicaid applicant’s eligibility.

Sometimes when a disabled person is used to being on one kind of Medicaid eligibility, they accept what their caseworker says about what they can and can’t do.  Never take what a Medicaid worker says at face value!  Speak with an elder law attorney and get that critical second opinion.  You may not even realize what creative planning options are out there!

Call for advice on Medicaid applications, asset protection and appeals ………. 732-382-6070

The Governor has a Medicaid system improvement bill on his desk

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If you or any of your colleagues, friends, or family members are in support of improving the system for Medicaid eligibility determinations, you should call the Governor’s Office  of new jersey’s Governor Murphy at 609.292.6000 and request that the Governor sign A4569/S499 into law. pass on this information to people you know who are interested in this issue.

According to BillTrack50, in its Bill Summary, This bill “requires the Commissioner of Human Services to develop an information technology platform for the intake, processing, and tracking of applications for benefits under the Medicaid and NJ FamilyCare programs.” Among other things, “The goals of the system will be: to simplify the applications and eligibility determination processes for both applicants and eligibility determination staff; to standardize application of eligibility policy across the various agencies responsible for eligibility determination; to allow for real-time tracking of the status of applications.”

At our Firm, we prepare and file Medicaid applications for the MLTSS long-term care Medicaid programs in nursing homes, assisted living and community care settings. It’s an incredibly complex process, since five years of transaction records are required, substantial evidence can be required for certain things, it can be challenging to explain transactions that occurred several years prior, and there seem to be many unwritten procedures and policies which vary a bit county by county. There are many legal pitfalls that can occur for an individual client that need particularized attention. Applications are regularly turned down due to insufficient evidence or failure to submit everything that is required. Applicants with alzheimers and other cognitive deterioration may not be able to recall or retrieve the necessary information.

Simplifying the application process would be great. This bill is a step ahead for monitoring and uniformity.

  • Implementation of the bill would bring accountability and uniformity to the Medicaid application system, in-line with the Governor’s goal to create a Fairer NJ. You can’t drive improvement to this process, if you can’t monitor.
  • Federal Government will pay 90% of IT development work and 75% for operations.
  • Bill has unanimous support in both houses
  • Bill is based on the report by the NJHCQI (Health Care Quality Institute), “Medicaid 2.0: Blueprint for the Future” with additional input/amendments/improvements by NJ NAELA (the New Jersey chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys)
  • If you have personal or professional experience which reinforces the need for the implementation of this bill, you should feel free to share it with the Governor’s office.

Call us for legal advice on how to achieve Medicaid eligibility for someone who needs long-term care ……….. 732-382-6070

Burden to provide all verifications sits with Medicaid applicant

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The Medicaid application process for MLTSS services in nursing homes, assisted living facilities or in the community requires a tremendous amount of documentation. Numerous documents pertaining to personal status, income, and finances must be produced. Filing an incomplete application increases the risk of a denial. Failing to produce the required documentation frequently leads to denials, as the courts in New Jersey have held again and again that the responsibility to produce proof of eligibility rests with the applicant and not with the agency which is processing the application. Of course, the notice of what’s missing actually needs to be delivered to the person who is filing the application, but upon receipt, one must “jump” since the time given to reply is typically really short.

Two recent cases illustrate the problems that can be encountered from failure to present required verifications for a Medicaid application These are not “published” decisions, so they are not considered to be binding precedent on any other court. But they do illustrate the problems that can arise. In both cases, there was a failure to produce certain documentation, and the court concluded that the individual had the authority to obtain the records had they wanted to do so. One case is RP vs DMAHS  2018    and the other is G.C. vs DMAHS (birth certificate case).

There may be circumstances in which the person filing the application has no authority to get documents. There may be a need to apply for guardianship or to get a court order directing the release of certain records. These are situations in which the person should quickly consult with an elder law attorney to take necessary protective action. The important thing is that the person filing the applicant needs to act — to seek whatever legal remedies might be necessary rather than just throwing up his hands and doing nothing. The pace of denials for “failure to provide verification” seems to be escalating and there may be numerous legal issues in any given application that need an attorney’s attention.

Don’t despair! Call us for help & legal advice with the preparation and filing of your MLTSS Medicaid application ……… 732-382-6070