Appeal of a Medicaid Denial Must be Filed within 20 days of Notice
When an application for Medicaid benefits is filed with a County Board of Social Services in New Jersey, it may be many months before the applicant hears back from the caseworker who is processing the application. If the applicant is in a nursing home or is suffering with Alzheimers Disease or other dementias it is crucial that they have a representative such as a family member, agent under...
Supported Decision-Making as an Alternative to Guardianship
Back on May 29-30 I participated in the 3rd World Congress on Adult Guardianship in Arlington VA and followed up with blog posts about alternative approaches to guardianship around the world. Supported Decision-Making is a concept that is gaining traction in many places and certainly deserves careful consideration here in New Jersey. It’s more complicated than merely entering an...
NJ Medicaid MLTSS Feedback Forums scheduled in October
You know by now that the New Jersey Department of Human Services has been developing a new Medicaid Long Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) program under its 2013 Comprehensive Medicaid Waiver. It’s still a work-in-progress. This program affects all elderly and disabled Medicaid applicants and Medicaid recipients who need long-term care Medicaid services outside of nursing homes. Three...
CAVC Troubled By One ROs Lack of Responsiveness . . . But One RO Has Shed Light Through the Fog of Recent
On October 7, 2014, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claim (CAVC) published a decision in Roberts v. McDonald (regarding how the offset should occur for surviving spouses both entitled to annuity benefits under the Survival Benefits Plan and VA benefits pursuant to dependency and indemnity compensation (DIC)), and a number of unpublished decisions. While unpublished decisions have no legal...
NJ Medicaid issues Guidance on new Qualified Income Trusts
I previously posted about the upcoming changes to the New Jersey Medicaid programs that pay for nursing home care and home and community-based services (HCBS) for people whose gross monthly income exceeds $2,163. This amount was formerly called the “income cap,” and people in that group could only receive Medicaid benefits in nursing homes. That was under the “Medically...
NJ’s SACCONE case allows use of Special Needs Trusts for PFRS Beneficiary
The New Jersey Supreme Court has issued a decision that will be very helpful to disabled children of retired NJ police and firefighters, called Saccone v Board of Trustees of the Police and Firemen’s Retirement System (9/11/2014), http://caselaw.findlaw.com/nj-supreme-court/1677772.html Under the rules for the Police and Firemen’s Retirement System (PFRS), upon the death of a...
Coordinating Home Care for the Frail Aged takes Persistence
It is axiomatic that aged individuals would prefer to remain in the comfort of their familiar surroundings rather than finish their lives in an institutional setting. This is the case whether the person lives in a mansion or a little apartment, in a house with their beloved front porch or a home with their comforting tiny living room or sunny little back yard. Federal initiatives exist that...
RSVP Senior Volunteer Program is up and running again in Essex and Hudson Counties
The Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) was started in the 1970’s as a program of the federal government that was administered by local non-profit organizations all over the USA to provide a way for retired people to continue to use their vast knowledge and skills to benefit others. In fact both my grandfather and my uncle — retired printers from Barton Press Inc. of Newark and...
Board of Veterans’ Appeals Grants Service Connection for Conditions Related to TBI
On September 22, 2014, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) granted service connection for an acquired mental health disorder and tinnitus for a Navy veteran. These disabilities related to documented TBI incidents that occurred while on active-duty service during the 1980s. The Board remanded to the VA Regional Office to assess the level of disability for the now-service connected...
Ten Years, Three BVA Remands, Grant of Service Connection. What’s next?
Although we were only involved in the claim for the last year, after multiple now-final denials (dating back to the 1960s) and a request to reopen that has been pending over ten years at various levels of the adjudication process, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) granted service connection for an Army Security Agency (ASA) veteran with a severe lumbar-spine disability that he...