Medicaid Asset Limits And Enrollment Among Older Adults And People With Disabilities

Medicaid asset limits determine how many countable resources older adults and people with disabilities may retain while qualifying for coverage. Although intended to target benefits to those with the greatest financial need, these rules may discourage saving and create administrative barriers to enrollment. Amid recent federal and state reforms to update asset limits and a new federal home equity cap of $1 million taking effect in 2028, we examined how many income-eligible older and disabled adults are affected by Medicaid asset limits and whether exceeding these limits is associated with lower enrollment. Using nationally representative data for 2023, we estimated that among 6.2 million income-eligible adults not enrolled in Medicaid, 1.5 million (24.7 percent) exceeded their state's financial asset limit and 387,525 (8.6 percent) exceeded the home equity limit. Regression discontinuity models indicated that exceeding financial asset thresholds was associated with lower enrollment among unmarried adults. Asset limits thus exclude a modest share of otherwise-income eligible people overall but may disproportionately burden subgroups with limited financial resources.