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01/30/2018 11:00 PMLegislators returned to Hartford on Jan. 31 to formally override Governor Dannel Malloy’s veto of the its move to restore funding to the Medicare Savings Program (MSP). The override passed the General Assembly by a margin of 131 to 4 votes in the House and 30 to 1 in the Senate.
The MSP is designed to help eligible residents cover Medicare Part B premiums and other Medicare out-of-pocket costs. Starting Jan. 1, 2018, the state was set to lower the eligibility thresholds to qualify for the plan in an effort to save close to $70 million. The previous annual income threshold for low-income seniors and the disabled to participate in the MSP was $25,447. The proposed new threshold for help was half that annual income, or $12,060 or less per year.
Many people enrolled in the program received a letter shortly after the budget passed informing them that they were no longer eligible under the new income guidelines; they and municipal social service agents quickly shared their concerns with the state legislators who’d recently enacted the change.
In response, the Department of Social Services (DSS) announced in December that the new income guidelines would not go into effect until March 1, 2018 rather than Jan. 1, essentially giving legislators time to find the money to the restore and fund the program under the previous income levels though the end of the fiscal year.
If the cuts had been enacted as outlined in the bipartisan budget passed in October 2017, an estimated 113,000 residents would have no longer qualified for the program this month with little to no notice. Following heavy criticism, on Jan. 8 the legislature voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring the $54 million—pulled from a surplus, teacher retirement savings, and administrative dollars—needed to keep the program funded at prior levels until July 1.
The plan was to restore the program through the end of the fiscal year and then take the next few months to consider actions like an asset test to keep the program sustainable in the future. The MSP has, to date, been administered solely using applicants’ income as the fiscal test; in theory, an applicant with low income but a substantial savings account could qualify. Other aid programs consider the applicants’ assets, which may also become the case with MSP.
While the governor took executive action to ensure the program would continue, Malloy, in his official bill veto notification on Jan. 15, said the restoration bill’s return to prior eligibility levels creates problems for the program and the budget.
“The bipartisan budget changes adopted to fund the MSP are wishful thinking, double counting, and pushing problems off into the future,” he said. “The bill has essentially done nothing to the state’s budget operations in order to fund restoration of the MSP by either adding new revenue or reducing state spending levels.”