TAPLINK

Support for
Pennsylvania
Adoptive & Foster Families

Taproot issue 49 - May 2005

CHILDREN’S ELIGIBILITY FOR MEDICAL ASSISTANCE

Children with disabilities who apply for Medical Assistance (MA) will no longer be rejected on the basis of their receipt of Social Security Disability Benefits (benefits that they receive as a result of the death, disability or retirement of a parent).

In Pennsylvania, children with disabilities have been enrolled in Medical Assistance (MA) without regard to the amount of their parent’s income for many years. Income in a child with a disability lost a working parent (or the parent become disabled or retired), and as a result the child began to receive benefits in their own name under their parent’s social security account, the child would become ineligible for MA. This was a serious problem for children who lost the income of a parent and had major uncovered medical expenses.

As a result of concerns about this, raised by Disability Law Project- PA (DLP), the Pennsylvania Health Law Project, and others, the Department of Welfare (DPW) has issued a new rule that children currently on MA and those applying for MA in the “Disabled Child” category will not have SSDI payments count against them.

There continues to be some questions of whether the “Disabled Child” category includes people between the ages of 18 and 21. If you know a young person with a disability between those ages who is unable to get MA as a result of SSDI benefits, please contact PA Protection and Advocacy at: (800)-692-7443 x 100.