Public Benefits

The Obama administration has provisionally agreed to end Medicare's longstanding practice of requiring that beneficiaries with chronic conditions and disabilities show a likelihood of improvement in order to receive coverage of skilled care and therapy services.

Several little-noticed provisions of the recently-enacted law that extended the Bush-era tax cuts fundamentally alter how the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid programs treat tax refunds and other tax credits, making it easier for people with special needs to...

A recent Parade magazine article highlights the problems that young adults face when they "age-out" of special education services and announces a Web site where families of people with autism can connect.

A report written by the Republican staff of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations found that administrative law judges - who decide appeals of federal disability claims - were not always properly citing medical evidence when making positive disability determinations, due...

Many Medicare beneficiaries buy a supplemental health insurance policy, called a "Medigap" policy, but the rules barring discrimination against applicants with pre-existing conditions do not apply to people with disabilities who are not yet 65 years old.

When Richard West, a 63-year-old veteran with muscular dystrophy, caught his home health care provider overbilling the state of New Jersey for services that it provided to Medicaid patients, he never expected that the state would reward him for his...

In most cases, transferring resources out of a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) applicant's name will result in a penalty period of up to 36 months. The transfer or sale of resources can be problematic.

In the first part of a two-part series, we explore initial steps for trustees to take when it comes time to terminate a special needs trust.

The Social Security Administration has begun to allow applicants for disability benefits to electronically sign their medical release forms in an attempt to speed up the application process.