Nebraska’s Medicaid rule is favorable in a nursing facility
Nebraska’s Medicaid income-disregard regulation says the amount received by a veteran or the veteran’s spouse as an Aid and Attendance benefit while in a nursing facility is not counted as income and is not used to determine the share of cost due to the facility. The rule is specifically framed around Aid and Attendance while in a nursing facility; do not assume the same treatment applies to every VA payment or care setting without checking the applicable rule (Nebraska Administrative Code 477, income disregards).
Nebraska DHHS also has a public N-FOCUS instruction for a $90 VA personal-needs payment in nursing-home or assisted-living-waiver budgeting. That page is dated December 2015 and uses a former $50 personal-needs figure, so the current $75 statutory allowance should be used for the contemporary allowance, while the current eligibility worker confirms the individual VA-payment coding (DHHS VA personal-needs instruction; Nebraska personal-needs statute).
Nebraska has four State Veterans Homes
Nebraska Department of Veterans’ Affairs says its four State Veterans Homes are in Bellevue, Norfolk, Kearney, and Scottsbluff. The state describes them as providing assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory care for eligible veterans and family members, which makes a State Veterans Home a care-setting option to assess separately from a VA pension or Medicaid financial determination (Nebraska Veterans’ Homes).
Nebraska also offers a Homestead Exemption property-tax-relief program for qualifying homeowners, including certain totally disabled veterans, qualifying surviving spouses, and veterans whose home was substantially contributed to by VA. Eligibility and deadlines belong to the state tax program; the tax benefit is not itself a Medicaid asset or recovery exception (Nebraska Department of Veterans’ Affairs tax benefits).
Coordinate the programs rather than assuming a stack
For a Nebraska veteran, verify the VA pension and Aid-and-Attendance claim, State Veterans Home admission and charge rules if applicable, and Nebraska Medicaid financial and share-of-cost treatment separately. The published nursing-facility disregard is useful, but it should be applied to the actual VA award and actual Medicaid living arrangement (VA benefit rules; Nebraska Medicaid income-disregard rule).
Nebraska veteran takeaway: Aid and Attendance paid to a veteran or spouse while in a nursing facility is excluded from income and facility share of cost under Nebraska’s published Medicaid rule; Nebraska also has four State Veterans Homes and a qualifying-veteran homestead-relief program (
Nebraska Medicaid rule;
Nebraska Veterans’ Homes).
Not mutually exclusive. Most families combine two or three funding pillars — this one rarely stands alone.
The
Journey Assessment ranks all ten pillars against your specific situation and
recommends the top three.
