New Hampshire Medicare Savings Programs 2026: QMB, SLMB, SLMB135

New Hampshire Medicare Savings Programs pay the 2026 Medicare Part B premium of $202.90 a month for people whose income is too high for full Medicaid. At the top tier they cover every Medicare deductible and copay as well. New Hampshire DHHS runs all three tiers as the Medicare Beneficiaries Savings Program, and labels the third one SLMB135, which is this state's name for the federal Qualifying Individual (QI) program.1,2

In This Guide

• What New Hampshire Calls Its Medicare Savings Programs
• What SLMB135 Means on Your DHHS Paperwork
• QMB: The Top Tier
• SLMB: Just the Part B Premium
• SLMB135: The Third Tier
• All Three New Hampshire Medicare Savings Programs Compared
• How Your Income Gets Counted
• What Counts Against the Resource Limit
• If a Provider Bills You and You Have QMB
• Part D Extra Help Comes With It
• How to Apply for a New Hampshire Medicare Savings Program
• What Changes After DHHS Approves You
• Where to Get Help in New Hampshire
• Frequently Asked Questions

New Hampshire uses the standard federal income and resource limits for all three Medicare Savings Program (MSP) tiers. The figures above are the national ones, not a New Hampshire deviation, and they're approximate: they track the Federal Poverty Level, they change every year, and DHHS does not publish its own dollar table. What's genuinely local here is the vocabulary.1,3

What New Hampshire Calls Its Medicare Savings Programs

Medicare Savings Programs are Medicaid-administered benefits that pay a low-income Medicare beneficiary's premiums and cost-sharing. QMB, SLMB, and QI are federal programs defined by income as a percentage of the Federal Poverty Level, and each state's Medicaid agency runs them.3

New Hampshire offers them under the name Medicare Beneficiaries Savings Program, administered by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) through the state Medicaid program. DHHS determines financial eligibility and handles enrollment for every tier.1

If your income is too high for regular Medicaid, DHHS runs a separate route as well: a medically-needy pathway it calls "In and Out," where you qualify by incurring medical bills that spend your countable income down to a state-set standard.6 In and Out and the Medicare Beneficiaries Savings Program are different answers to the same problem. If you're on Medicare, the savings programs are usually the first one to check: they have no spend-down and no bills to incur.

What SLMB135 Means on Your DHHS Paperwork

SLMB135 is New Hampshire's name for the federal Qualifying Individual (QI) program.1

Federal pages, Medicare's own site, and every national explainer call the 120-135% FPL tier "QI." New Hampshire's forms and approval notices call it SLMB135. The "135" is the FPL ceiling: 135% of the Federal Poverty Level.3

So if a DHHS letter says you were approved for SLMB135, you were approved for QI. Everything written about QI applies to you: it pays your Part B premium, it comes from a capped federal allotment, and federal law closes it to anyone otherwise eligible for medical assistance under the state plan.3,7,4 Federal law makes all four Medicare Savings Program groups mandatory for the 50 states and the District of Columbia, so New Hampshire also runs a fourth: Qualified Disabled and Working Individuals (QDWI), for working people with disabilities who lost premium-free Part A.7,3 QDWI carries a parallel restriction, and it serves a different population from the three tiers below.7

QMB: The Top Tier

QMB pays the most. For a 2026 enrollee it covers:

• The Part B standard premium, $202.90 a month2
• The Part A premium, though about 99% of beneficiaries already have premium-free Part A from 40 or more quarters of Medicare-covered work8
• The Part A inpatient hospital deductible, $1,736 per benefit period2
• The Part B annual deductible, $2832
• Every Medicare coinsurance and copay, across every Medicare-covered service3

For a single New Hampshire retiree on Social Security, the 2026 Part B premium alone is about $2,434.80 a year that stops leaving the benefit check.2

SLMB: Just the Part B Premium

The Part B premium is the whole of what SLMB covers: $202.90 a month in 2026, or about $2,434.80 over the year. Deductibles and copays stay yours.2,1

If you rarely see a doctor, that single benefit is most of what QMB would have given you anyway.

SLMB135: The Third Tier

SLMB135 pays the Part B premium, same as SLMB, at a higher income band. What sets it apart is that it can run out. QI is funded from a capped annual federal allotment and granted first-come, first-served, so file early in the calendar year rather than late. Federal statute is explicit that QI is not an entitlement: an eligible QMB or SLMB applicant cannot be turned away or waitlisted for want of funding, but an eligible SLMB135 applicant can.1,3,4

It also can't be stacked on Medicaid. The federal statute that defines QI closes it to anyone "not otherwise eligible for medical assistance under the State plan," a bar that reaches wider than full Medicaid alone.7 New Hampshire's In and Out pathway is medical assistance under that state plan, so it sits on the wrong side of that line.6 If you're weighing an In and Out spend-down against SLMB135, that's a choice between them, not a way to hold both. Ask DHHS or a ServiceLink counselor to run the comparison for your numbers.

All Three New Hampshire Medicare Savings Programs Compared

In 2026 the resource limit is the same across all three New Hampshire Medicare Savings Program tiers ($9,950 for a single applicant, $14,910 for a couple), so the tier you land in is decided by income alone. Those bands sit at 100% FPL, 100-120% FPL, and 120-135% FPL.1,3

How Your Income Gets Counted

The income DHHS tests is not your gross income. MSP financial eligibility runs on Supplemental Security Income counting rules: the federal QMB definition in the Social Security Act sets income and resources as they're determined for the SSI program.9

Two exclusions do most of the work:

• SSI doesn't count the first $20 of most monthly income. It comes off unearned income first, which for most retirees means the Social Security check.10
• If you work, SSI also ignores the first $65 of monthly earnings plus half of everything above $65.9

That's why a gross figure a little over one of the lines above doesn't settle anything. States may also apply disregards of their own, and federal guidance is explicit that applicants should confirm current limits with their state.3 The practical rule: if you're anywhere near a line, apply and let DHHS run the arithmetic.

For scale, SSI's own federal benefit rate in 2026 is $994 a month for an individual and $1,491 for a couple, well below the QMB line of about $1,350.11,1,3 Income that's too high for the programs keyed to SSI is routinely low enough for an MSP.

What Counts Against the Resource Limit

New Hampshire keeps a live asset test. DHHS counts what you own, and your spouse's resources too if you're married, against the 2026 Medicare Savings Program resource limits of $9,950 (single) and $14,910 (couple).1,3

Under the SSI resource rules the MSP test borrows, these don't count:

• The home you live in, and the land it sits on, whatever it's worth12
• One vehicle used for transportation, whatever it's worth12
• Household goods and personal effects12
• Up to $1,500 per person set aside and clearly designated for burial expenses, for you and separately for a spouse, as long as it's kept separate from other money9,13
• Life insurance cash value, if the total face value of all policies on one person is $1,500 or less. Above $1,500 of face value, the combined cash surrender value counts.13

Checking and savings balances, stocks, bonds, CDs, a second vehicle, and a vacation property all count.

If the house or the car is what's keeping you from applying, neither one counts. The MSP ceiling is also roomy next to SSI's own resource limits, which stop at $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple.11,1

If a Provider Bills You and You Have QMB

Federal law bars every Medicare provider and supplier, pharmacies included, from billing a QMB enrollee for Part A or Part B deductibles, coinsurance, or copayments. It applies even when New Hampshire Medicaid pays the provider nothing toward that cost-sharing, and it applies whether or not the provider takes Medicaid. Providers must accept the Medicare payment as payment in full and bill the state instead. A provider who ignores it violates the Medicare Provider Agreement and can face sanctions.14,3

If a bill shows up anyway:

1. Don't pay it. Tell the provider you're in the QMB group and that federal law bars the charge.
2. Show your DHHS approval notice.
3. Call ServiceLink at 1-866-634-9412. New Hampshire's State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) counselors give free, confidential, unbiased Medicare counseling and can help you sort it out.15
4. If it isn't resolved, call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) and ask the representative to submit your complaint to the Medicare Beneficiary Ombudsman, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) office that handles beneficiary complaints Medicare and your plan didn't fix.16

Part D Extra Help Comes With It

Enrolling in any New Hampshire MSP tier automatically qualifies you for Extra Help, the Part D Low-Income Subsidy. You don't file a second application. Since 2024 there's no partial tier left, so everyone who qualifies gets the full subsidy.5

Full Extra Help in 2026 means:

• No Part D deductible. The annual deductible is eliminated outright for full-subsidy enrollees. The $615 ceiling you may read about as the 2026 maximum Part D deductible is the rule for people who don't get Extra Help.17
• $0 for the plan premium, as long as the plan you pick is priced at or under the cap Medicare sets for your region. That cap is the greater of your region's low-income benchmark premium or the lowest basic drug-plan premium sold there. Choose a costlier plan and you pay the difference.17
• $5.10 per generic prescription, $12.65 per brand-name drug5
• $0 for covered drugs once your out-of-pocket spending hits $2,100 for the year18,5

In 2026, Extra Help's own resource limits are far higher than the MSP ones: $16,590 for an individual and $33,100 for a couple. If your assets put you over the $9,950 MSP line, you may still qualify for Extra Help on its own through the Social Security Administration.5,1,3

How to Apply for a New Hampshire Medicare Savings Program

New Hampshire DHHS takes the application three ways: online through the NH EASY portal, on the paper Application for Assistance (Form 800) filed by mail or dropped at a district office, or by phone through the DHHS Customer Service Center at 1-844-ASK-DHHS (1-844-275-3447).6

If any of that is daunting, ServiceLink counselors will do the application with you, at no cost.15

What Changes After DHHS Approves You

Your premium stops coming out of your Social Security check, but not instantly. Once you're approved, New Hampshire pays your Part B premium through a federal arrangement called state buy-in, authorized under Section 1843 of the Social Security Act. Buy-in is processed through a periodic data exchange between DHHS and CMS rather than at the moment of approval, so the deduction usually keeps coming for a month or more. Don't pay the premium separately, and don't panic when it's still withheld. Premiums taken for months the state is now responsible for get credited back to you.20

SLMB and SLMB135 can reach backward. QMB cannot. SLMB and QI follow the general Medicaid retroactivity rule and can be made effective up to three months before the month you applied, if you'd have qualified then. QMB is prospective-only by statute: coverage starts the first day of the month after DHHS approves you, and no earlier.21 That asymmetry is a real argument for filing sooner, because the months you wait on a QMB application are months nobody can give back.

The tiers also don't reach equally far. QMB covers the Part A and Part B premiums plus Medicare cost-sharing; SLMB and SLMB135 pay the Part B premium and carry no Medicare cost-sharing protection, so deductibles, coinsurance, and copays stay yours.1,3,22

Where to Get Help in New Hampshire

Learn More

Find personalized help applying for a New Hampshire Medicare Savings Program at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.