The Advocate’s Guide to the MAGI, Byron J. Gross, Wayne Turner and David Machledt, The National Health Law Program (October 2013)

This guide explains Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI), a provision of the Affordable Care Act that introduced a new methodology to evaluate eligibility for Insurance Affordability Programs. The purpose of MAGI is to have a nationwide system for calculating income, rather than individual systems within each state. Beginning in 2014, MAGI “will be used to evaluate available income for most Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program . . . applicants and enrollees.” The guide describes in detail how MAGI operates and the guidelines that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will use to implement and govern this new methodology. The guide includes explanations of the categories of persons who are and are not subject to MAGI and a summary of the differences between current Medicaid rules and MAGI.