Tuesday, December 13, 2016
YOUNGSTOWN
Eligibility requirements for the Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension, a tax-free allowance for wartime veterans and their surviving spouses, 65 and older, to help pay for senior living and home care, may become more stringent in 2017.
If the new requirements proposed by Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs are enacted, many veterans now eligible would no longer qualify for the A&A Pension, said Kaylin Gilkey, senior manager of VeteranAid.org.
The A&A Pension, a Department of Veterans Affairs program often referred to as the “ghost benefit” because an estimated 70 percent of qualifying senior vets don’t know about it, can provide up to $2,120 a month for caregiving assistance to veterans and their husbands or wives, said Gilkey.
The A&A Pension provides financial support to veterans and their spouses who require another person’s aid with daily-living activities such as medication management and meal or care support. Both in-home care and senior housing are covered by the A&A Pension, which can provide up to $1,788 per month to a veteran, $1,149 per month to a surviving spouse, $2,120 per month to a couple, or $1,406 per month‚ã to a veteran with a sick spouse.
At present, to qualify for the A&A pension, a veteran, and his or her spouse, if applicable, must have $80,000 or less in total assets, excluding one home and one vehicle. In addition, the veteran must have been honorably discharged and have served 90-consecutive days, at least one of which was during an approved period of war.
Among the proposed changes, which Gilkey deemed “likely but not certain” to be enacted, is a rule that would make applicants subject to an examination of the past three years of their financial history to determine eligibility. At present, the VA determines eligibility by looking at a veteran’s income, assets and expenses from the past year beginning from the time of application, said Gilkey.
“There may be another comment period on the proposed changes which at this point is unknown. One of VeteranAid’s goal is to make the Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension as widely known as Medicare and Medicaid before that comment period,” Gilkey said.
VeteranAid.org, a free A&A Pension resource and forum, and A Place for Mom, a national senior living referral service, are teaming up to raise awareness of the A&A Pension and help senior vets understand the proposed pension changes that could drastically reduce the number of veterans who qualify, she said.
The proposed changes are in the Federal Register, a legal newspaper published by the National Archives and Records Administration that contains federal agency regulations, proposed rules and public notices.