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Eagle County works to correct Medicaid eligibility glitch

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February 12, 2018, 8:35 am

Editor’s note: A version of this story first appeared on the Vail Daily website on Feb. 11, 2018.

A Boulder attorney is worried some Eagle County residents are being denied Medicaid benefits and possibly Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTC) to offset health insurance costs under Obamacare because the county is incorrectly determining income eligibility.

eagle county logo“This is the second year in a row I’ve dealt with this issue for a client, and I’m concerned that there may be more community members who don’t realize they are being denied eligibility,” said Boulder attorney Sean Owens. “[County officials] have not been taking into account deductions to income – for example, retirement contributions – when determining eligibility for benefits.”

After first contacting Eagle County on behalf of a local client last year, the problem was fixed and his client became eligible for Medicaid benefits. He was told at the time that the overall problem was being addressed and would not happen again. Then it happened again this year.

“It can be a situation where someone is making borderline where they would qualify for Medicaid, and if they put a thousand dollars into a retirement account, they would qualify, and they might not even be aware that they can still save for retirement and qualify for Medicaid,” Owens said.

For instance, someone making $20,000 a year can contribute $3,000 to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and get their Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) under the eligibility cutoff level for Medicaid, which last year was just under $17,000 a year for individuals.

Owens says Eagle County officials were not allowing for retirement contributions.

Megan Burch, interim director of Eagle County’s Department of Human Services, agrees that retirement contributions should have been taken into consideration when calculating Medicaid eligibility for Owens’ client last year.

Burch says IRA contributions are listed as an allowable deduction from gross income for the purposes of determining Medicaid eligibility as outlined in the Code of Colorado Regulations. She added her department had to contact the state for clarification on how to appropriately enter the deduction into the state database, called the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS).

In the future, Burch says steps have been taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Training was then provided to all staff members tasked with entering these details into CBMS for Medicaid applications to ensure these situations are handled appropriately,” Burch said in an email. “We have an internal quality assurance review process that will also be reviewing cases to ensure eligibility was properly determined. Additionally, cases are randomly pulled by the state audit team as another layer of quality assurance.”

Owens hopes those steps end the issue for his client and anyone else who may have been denied eligibility either for Medicaid or Obamacare tax credits – most of whom he says would not have thought to contact an attorney to sort out the problem.

He’s also worried that 401(k) and other types of pre-tax contributions may not be calculated properly because, according to a fact sheet from the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, “child care expenses, flexible spending accounts, employer sponsored health insurance and contributions to 401(k)” are not allowed as deductions.

“​Technically this is correct — each of those listed items are not deductions — but they do modify MAGI for Medicaid purposes because they are often pretax contributions that directly modify AGI,” Owens said. “If these pre-tax contributions aren’t being handled correctly, that could be a problem.”

 

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.