From Medicare Watch, by medicarerights.org

Streamlining Transitions to Medicaid for Medicare-Eligible Individuals

Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expands Medicaid coverage to populations that traditionally have not been eligible, and expands coverage for those who are not eligible for Medicare if they have incomes up to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). In addition, the ACA eliminates the consideration of assets from eligibility determinations and applies a universal Modified Gross Adjusted Income (MAGI) calculation to determine eligibility. The ACA also streamlines enrollment for these individuals, eliminating documentation requirements to prove income and allowing states to match information provided on applications with tax information at the IRS. The ACA envisions an electronic application portal through which individuals may be determined eligible for Medicaid in real time. Together these changes will vastly improve the application, determination and enrollment processes for Medicaid and ensure individuals receive benefits and health coverage in a timely manner.

However, these improvements may not apply to individuals once they become Medicare-eligible. For this reason, the Medicare Rights Center is working to ensure that people with Medicare receive the same benefits of streamlined enrollment in low-income programs. Specifically, Medicare Rights is working in New York and other states to encourage those in charge of establishing new protocols and designing modern enrollment systems to include the Medicare population in these improvements. Although not required to do so by the ACA, states can change application and eligibility rules for Medicaid for people with Medicare to better align them with those that will be applied to the non-Medicare population. As part of this effort, this week Medicare Rights provided testimony at a New York State Insurance Department public forum on the health insurance exchange. The testimony called for the state, in building modern enrollment systems in anticipation of 2014, to include the Medicare population in such systems. This will help prevent people with Medicare from being left behind in current determination and enrollment systems that use outdated technology and lead to bureaucratic disentitlements, and it will prevent gaps in coverage that could occur as a result of the transition from Medicaid to Medicare and Medicaid.