The Dermody and Mondor Cases on Spousal Annuities Have Been Appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court

The issue of who or what the beneficiary of an annuity must be for MassHealth purposes is not yet resolved. The parties in Dermody v. EOHHS  and EOHHS v. Mondor et al have filed a joint Petition for Certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”). You can follow the progress of the case at the  SCOTUS case docket.

As you can see at the SCOTUS site, the procedural games regularly played by the MassHealth agency continue. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Attorney General waited until the last day for responding to the Petition for Certiorari, then chose not to respond. SCOTUS ordered a response, and the Assistant Attorney General handling the case then asked for extra time to respond.

The Supreme Judicial Court had issued lazy opinions in Dermody and Mondor, in my view. In the case of Hughes v. McCarthy , the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had reached the exact opposite conclusion about what Medicaid law requires. The Petition for Certiorari asks SCOTUS to take up our cases and decide whether the Hughes analysis is more intellectually sound. We should know within three months whether SCOTUS will take up the cases.