Last updated: July 27, 2026.
Almost every number on this site is a dollar amount that decides whether a family can afford to stay in their home. A wrong number is not a typo. It is a wasted month, a denied application, or a $12,000 bathroom someone could have had paid for. So we treat sourcing as the product, not as a formality.
The one rule
Every dollar figure, eligibility rule, and coverage decision on this site traces back to a document published by the agency that actually makes the decision. Not to a press release about the document. Not to a contractor’s blog post summarizing it. To the document.
Where the agency has not published a number, we write that the agency has not published it. We never substitute an estimate, an industry average, or a figure we found on an aggregator site and dress it up as official.
The three tiers we pull from
Tier 1 — Statute and regulation
The Code of Federal Regulations and the United States Code, read on eCFR or govinfo. This is what we cite when the question is “is a program legally allowed to pay for this.” Example: the rules governing supplemental benefits in Medicare Advantage plans live at 42 CFR 422.102, and we quote the operative subsection rather than paraphrasing what a plan’s marketing page says about it.
Tier 2 — Agency coverage instruments
National Coverage Determinations, Local Coverage Determinations and their billing articles, CMS program manuals, VA directives, and USDA program handbooks. These are the documents a claims processor actually reads.
This tier is where most competing articles go wrong. The usual move is to cite the CMS consumer booklet on durable medical equipment to prove that Medicare does not cover a stair lift. That booklet contains no complete exclusion list. The exclusion is in the coverage manual section on durable medical equipment, which lists “elevators, stairway elevators” and “self-help devices (such as safety grab bars)” among items that are not covered. We cite the section that contains the words, and we quote the words.
Tier 3 — State program documents
Medicaid home and community based services waiver applications, state administrative codes, state Medicaid provider manuals, and the websites of state units on aging. Home modification benefits are set state by state, so a national number does not exist and we do not invent one. Each state page is researched from that state’s own documents.
What we refuse to use
- Senior care and eldercare aggregator sites, which recycle each other’s numbers until the original source is untraceable.
- Manufacturer and contractor blogs, which have an obvious interest in the answer being “yes, this is covered.”
- Other publishers’ summaries of government documents. If we cannot open the government document ourselves, we do not make the claim.
- Numbers with no date attached. A grant maximum without a fiscal year is not information.
Every number carries a verification date
Program figures change on schedules that have nothing to do with when we happened to publish an article. VA grant maximums reset with the federal fiscal year on October 1. CMS reissues coverage determinations with new transmittal numbers mid-year. States amend waivers continuously.
So we keep a re-verification calendar and work it, rather than letting articles quietly rot:
| Source | How often we re-open it | Why that interval |
|---|---|---|
| VA Specially Adapted Housing and Special Home Adaptation grant maximums | Every October 1 | Adjusted with each federal fiscal year |
| VA Home Improvements and Structural Alterations amounts | Every 6 months | Changed by directive rather than on a fixed calendar |
| Medicare National Coverage Determination 280.1, durable medical equipment | Annually | Reissued with new version and transmittal numbers; the version we cite is Version 4, Transmittal 13374, effective June 9, 2025 |
| National Coverage Determination 280.4 and the related Local Coverage Determination and billing article | Annually | Contractor-level documents revise more often than national ones |
| USDA Section 504 grant and loan caps | Annually | Set by program notice |
| IRS Publication 502, medical expense deductions | Every January | Reissued each filing season |
| CMS certificate of medical necessity form versions | Annually | Form revisions invalidate older submissions |
| VHA directive on home improvement benefits | Every 6 months | Directives are recertified on a rolling basis |
| State waiver pages for Texas, New York and California | Every 6 months | Waiver amendments and renewals |
| Michigan Children’s Special Needs Fund | Every January and July | Published limits move twice a year |
How to check us
Every factual claim on this site links to the source. Click it. If the link does not support the sentence it is attached to, that is our error and we want to hear about it.
When we correct something material, we say so on the page and update the last-reviewed date rather than editing silently.
What this page is not
Careful sourcing is not the same as advice. We are publishers, not benefits counselors, attorneys, or medical professionals. Coverage decisions turn on facts specific to one person and one plan. Read what the program documents say here, then confirm your own case with the program itself or with a State Health Insurance Assistance Program counselor, whose help is free.