Ops Memo 2014-16: SNAP- Standard Medical Deduction

Overview
In March 2008, the Department received a waiver of medical expense deduction rules from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. This allowed the Department to provide a Standard Medical Deduction (SMD) to eligible elderly or disabled clients who verified more than $35 in monthly medical expenses.

The SMD waiver has been renewed for an additional five years. One major change is that the SMD amount has increased from $90 to $155. This increase in SMD amount will increase the monthly benefit for many SNAP households and encourage participation by elderly/disabled households. In addition, SMD facilitates processing for case managers by streamlining the process of verifying medical expenses. Households that verify medical expenses greater than $190 per month will be able to claim their actual monthly medical expenses.

Purpose of Memo
This Operations Memo:

• discusses the conversion of cases with medical expenses on file;
• issues case manager procedures for processing medical expenses at application; and
• issues case manager procedures for processing medical expenses at recertification.

Obsolete
Field Operations Memo 2008-15 is now obsolete.