Pending Legislation Will Help Seniors

Several pieces of legislation pending in Washington D.C. have the potential to help seniors and those with disabilities. Here's a recap: 

• Stop the Wait Act
• The FAIR Act
• Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act

Stop the Wait Act

Currently, a person with disabilities must wait months to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Then, he or she must wait another five months to get a disability check.  Then, the individual must wait another two years to obtain health coverage through Medicare. 

The Stop the Wait Act aims to end these mandated waiting periods and give those who need it access to crucial benefits and medical care. The Act’s objectives are:

• Require the Social Security Administration to start making payments to SSDI applicants immediately after the applicant is deemed eligible for benefits. This would eliminate the mandatory five-month waiting period.
• Phase out the mandatory two-year waiting period for Medicare disability benefits.
• Order the National Academy of Medicine to lead a study to ensure that eliminating these waiting periods results in better outcomes for those effected.

The Stop the Wait Act was introduced in the House in September 2019 and is co-sponsored by 35 representatives. 

FAIR Act

We’ve covered the problems nursing home patients face when admission contracts include clauses called “pre-dispute arbitration agreements.” A new law, pending in Washington D.C. addresses this problem.

The Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, which has been pending since February of this year, aims to prohibit mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements in a number of situations – future employment, consumer, antitrust, and civil rights disputes.  Although not specifically focused on nursing home agreements, “consumer disputes” would cover this territory. 

Senior advocates are hopeful that if the FAIR Act passes, it will provide clear guidance on the use of pre-dispute arbitration agreements in the nursing home admissions process. 

Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act

This Act would update the income and asset rules pertaining to Supplemental Security Income qualification, to better reflect today’s dollars.  The Act would:

• Increase the general income disregard from $20 per month to $123 per month.
  This would increase the amount of money an SSI recipient could receive in any given month from non-employment sources, such as a pension, without suffering a dollar-for-dollar reduction in benefits. 

• Increase the earned income disregard from $65 per month to $399 per month. This would increase the amount that an SSI recipient could earn from working without suffering a reduction in benefits.

• Increase the resource limit from $2,000 for a single person to $10,000; increase the resource limit from $3,000 for a married couple to $20,000.The resource limit is the amount of resources one can have and still qualify for benefits.  The increase would allow an applicant to have more in savings and still qualify. 

• Repeal the in-kind support and maintenance rule. The in-kind support and maintenance rule states that if a recipient receives help from another in the form of food or shelter, then the recipient’s benefits will be reduced. 

• Repeal the transfer penalty rule. The transfer penalty rule states that recipients can be penalized for up to three years of ineligibility if he or she transfers a resource. 

• Remove marriage penalty by increasing the rate for SSI couples. Currently, if two SSI recipients are married, their benefits are less than if two unmarried individuals received SSI benefits. This new rule would remove that “penalty” and increase an SSI-recipient couple’s rate to that of two times the individual rate. 

The Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act was introduced in the House in September 2019, and is sponsored by Representative Raul Grijalva from Arizona.

If passsed, these Acts could help seniors and those with disabilities. We will keep you posted on the status of each.