What's happening
This bill allows the exclusion of certain non-recurring income items when determining eligibility for New York's elderly pharmaceutical insurance program.
Why it matters
Allows for fairer eligibility determination. By permitting the exclusion of certain one-time income events (like a retiree’s previous year’s wages or non-recurring IRA distributions), the bill ensures that applicants aren’t unfairly disqualified from the elderly pharmaceutical insurance program due to temporary income spikes.
Targets real financial need. This change helps the program focus on seniors’ ongoing, typical financial resources rather than misleading “blips” in income, making sure support reaches those with true long-term need.
Provides administrative flexibility. The bill gives the commissioner of health the authority to define and update which non-recurring income items can be excluded, allowing for adaptive and responsive program management as new types of income events become common.
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Who cares
Headline styles
Protect Seniors’ Drug Coverage
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
Assembly Member · Assembly District 40
13 Co-sponsors
2 Multi-sponsors
History
- Enacting clause stricken
- Referred to aging
Full text
1 pageUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
841
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY (Prefiled)
January 8, 2025
Introduced by M. of A. KIM, LUCAS, BENEDETTO, SIMONE, HEVESI, TAYLOR, EPSTEIN, DAVILA, LUPARDO, BICHOTTE HERMELYN, LEVENBERG, DILAN, DeSTE- FANO, REYES -- Multi-Sponsored by -- M. of A. CHANG, WOERNER -- read once and referred to the Committee on Aging
AN ACT to amend the elder law, in relation to policies excluding certain non-recurring items from income for purposes of the program for elderly pharmaceutical insurance coverage
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Subdivision 3 of section 241 of the elder law is amended to read as follows:
3. "Income" shall mean "household gross income" as defined in the real property tax circuit breaker credit program, pursuant to subparagraph [(C)] (c) of paragraph one of subsection (e) of section six hundred six of the tax law, but only shall include the income of program applicants and spouses and shall exclude the income of other members of the household; provided, however, that the commissioner of health may adopt policies to exclude from income certain non-recurring items that would act to artificially inflate the availability of funds to meet current needs including, but not limited to, a retiree's previous year's wages, and non-recurring distributions from an individual retirement account.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD01879-01-5
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.