| Notes: | Under longstanding federal law, states must follow certain rules in determining income-eligibility, but they also have considerable flexibility regarding whether they will count or exempt certain types or amounts of income and whether they allow deductions for certain types or amounts of expenses. Typically, states “disregard” — that is, they do not count — a portion of earnings from a working family’s income to reflect that these resources are needed to cover work-related expenses and generally are not available to cover other costs, such as the cost of purchasing health coverage.
45 states, including DC, use the standard general income disregard of $20 when determining eligibility, which is added to the monthly income limit for the individual or couple.
In 11 states, known as 209(b) states, Medicaid eligibility rules for people with disabilities and the elderly are slightly different from the federal SSI program. In 209(b) states, both the financial and non-financial eligibility criteria can be more restrictive than the federal standard, as long as they are no more restrictive than the rules they had in place in 1972. 209(b) eligibility states: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia.
Data for Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming do not reflect SSI State Supplement. State Supplements are found at http://ssaonline.us/policy/docs/progdesc/ssi_st_asst/2009/index.html#toc.
FPL for a family of three in 2009: $18,310 for 48 contiguous states and District of Columbia, $22,890 for Alaska, $21,060 for Hawaii. |