New York VA Aid & Attendance

VA Aid & Attendance and New York Medicaid don't always speak the same language when it comes to counting income. Under SSI methodology, the Aid & Attendance and Housebound allowances are treated as unearned income exclusions for Medicaid eligibility purposes, while the underlying basic VA pension itself is still counted. Secondary sources describe this applying to Community Medicaid specifically, though a current Department of Health directive confirming the point directly wasn't located in this research.

The rules shift again once someone reaches the patient-pay, or share-of-cost, stage for institutional or waiver services. At that later point, Aid & Attendance is counted under the post-eligibility rule — so families shouldn't assume the treatment used at the eligibility stage automatically carries through to every later calculation.