Medicare Savings Programs in Massachusetts

MassHealth does not run SLMB and QI as separate programmes with separate limits. It runs one band above QMB, reaching 225% of the poverty guideline, $2,993 a month for one person. A reader comparing three federal programmes against three Massachusetts programmes will not find the third.

Take someone with $2,526 a month in income and savings well above $9,950. Under the federal rules they fail on both counts. In Massachusetts they are inside the QMB limit and there is no resource test to fail. The same person, with the same money, in a state that follows the federal rule qualifies for nothing at all.

Massachusetts removed its asset test outright in March 2024 rather than raising it. That is a different decision from California's, which dropped its test for two years and then reinstated it at an elevated level in January 2026.

This is the part a state agency page cannot tell you, because it has only its own figures. We hold all 51.

• Income. Massachusetts’s QMB limit of $2,527 is the 3rd highest of the 46 jurisdictions publishing a comparable figure, at 187% of the federal screening limit. The highest is the District of Columbia at $4,010; most states sit at $1,350 or the bare $1,330 beneath it.
• Resources. Massachusetts is one of 12 jurisdictions applying no resource test. The others are Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

The full table of all 51 carries every figure with the agency page it came from.

All three programmes carry full Extra Help for Part D automatically — federal regulation treats anyone eligible for QMB, SLMB or QI as a full-subsidy individual, with no separate application. And the Part D late enrollment penalty, which is otherwise permanent, is not charged while someone is subsidy-eligible. Qualifying in Massachusetts therefore stops a penalty being charged for as long as the eligibility lasts — a waiver for that period rather than a cancellation, since a later gap in coverage without Extra Help can bring one back.

Applications go to MassHealth, by post or using the Medicare Savings Programs application — not to Medicare, and not to this site. The form is Medicare Savings Programs Application. MassHealth Customer Service 1-800-841-2900, or SHINE on 1-800-243-4636. Applying for Extra Help through Social Security also starts a savings-programme application with the state unless you ask it not to. Free, unbiased help is available from a State Health Insurance Assistance Program counsellor at shiphelp.org.