VA Aid and Attendance raises a wartime veteran's 2026 pension ceiling to $29,093 a year, paid monthly as cash for in-home care in Colorado. The veteran controls the money and can spend it on an agency aide or a family caregiver. Because it is paid to the beneficiary as part of the monthly pension, it commonly goes toward a home health aide or a homemaker. For a veteran or surviving spouse who needs help with daily activities, that monthly benefit can be what keeps them at home.

This guide explains what in-home care costs in Colorado, how much Aid and Attendance pays, who qualifies, and how the benefit works alongside Health First Colorado, the state's Medicaid program.

In This Guide

How Much In-Home Care Costs in Colorado

In-home care in Colorado runs above the national average. According to the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey (released March 2026), a non-medical caregiver in Colorado costs about $94,952 per year, or $42 an hour, based on a 44-hour-per-week schedule, the 7th highest in the country. The 2025 survey combines home health aide and homemaker help into a single non-medical caregiver category, and Colorado's figure runs above the national median of $80,080 a year ($35 an hour).

These are industry-survey medians, and the Denver and mountain-resort areas typically run higher than rural counties. This is exactly the kind of expense Aid and Attendance is designed to offset.

How Aid and Attendance Helps Pay for In-Home Care in Colorado

Aid and Attendance is an increased monthly VA pension for wartime veterans and surviving spouses who need help with daily activities. It is paid as cash directly to the veteran, who decides how to use it. Because it is paid to the beneficiary as part of the monthly pension, families commonly put it toward a home health aide, a homemaker, or a family caregiver.

Category Maximum Annual Pension Rate
Veteran alone $29,093
Veteran with one dependent (spouse or child) $34,488
Surviving spouse, no dependents $18,697

The VA publishes these as annual figures, but pension is paid monthly: under 38 CFR 3.273, VA takes the applicable rate, subtracts the beneficiary's countable income, and divides the remainder by 12. Read those as ceilings rather than promises: the MAPR is the maximum amount of pension payable, and VA bases the payment on the difference between the claimant's income for VA purposes and that limit, so a household with countable income receives less than the table shows. Even at the full $29,093 ceiling for a veteran alone, or $34,488 for a veteran with one dependent, the benefit covers part, not all, of Colorado's $94,952 annual median for a non-medical caregiver., Keep in mind the VA pays the veteran; the veteran arranges and pays for the care.

How In-Home Care Costs Lower Your Countable Income

VA pension, including the Aid and Attendance increase, is a needs-based benefit: to be eligible, your yearly family income and net worth have to fall within limits set by Congress. Continuing, out-of-pocket care costs, such as paying a home health aide, count as unreimbursed medical expenses (UMEs) that reduce the income the VA counts, which is why many veterans who look "too rich" on paper still qualify once their care bills are subtracted.

Only the portion of those expenses above 5% of your applicable maximum annual pension rate (MAPR) is deductible. As the VA puts it, you may deduct only the amount that's above 5% of your MAPR amount, which is $872 for a veteran with no spouse or child. That floor rises if you have dependents, but it never reflects the aid and attendance or housebound increase. So if a veteran pays about $94,952 a year for in-home care in Colorado, nearly all of it counts against income once the first roughly $872 is set aside.

Payments to an in-home attendant for help with daily and instrumental activities are medical expenses as long as the attendant provides health care or custodial care, and the payments must be commensurate with the number of hours the provider attends to the person. The attendant must be a health care provider unless the veteran needs aid and attendance or is housebound, or a physician, physician assistant, certified nurse practitioner, or clinical nurse specialist states in writing that, due to a physical, mental, developmental, or cognitive disorder, the individual requires the health care or custodial care that the in-home attendant provides.

Who Qualifies

To qualify for Aid and Attendance, a veteran generally must:

  • Meet the wartime service test, which turns on when service began. The VA lists three paths: a veteran who started active duty before September 8, 1980 needs at least 90 days of active duty with at least 1 day during a wartime period; a veteran who started active duty as an enlisted person after September 7, 1980 needs at least 24 months (with some exceptions), or the full period for which they were called or ordered to active duty, again with at least 1 day during wartime; and a veteran who started active duty as an officer after October 16, 1981 and had not previously served on active duty for at least 24 months, also with at least 1 day during wartime.
  • Not have received a dishonorable discharge, and meet at least one of four conditions: be at least 65 years old; have a permanent and total disability; be a patient in a nursing home for long-term care because of a disability; or be getting Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income. Any one of the four satisfies the test on its own: a wartime veteran under 65 who receives SSI meets this part of the test without any adjudicated disability rating.
  • Meet one of the aid and attendance criteria: needing another person's help on a regular basis with activities such as dressing and undressing, keeping clean and presentable, feeding oneself, or attending to the wants of nature, or needing care on a regular basis to stay safe from the hazards of daily life; or being bedridden; or being a patient in a nursing home because of a loss of mental or physical abilities related to a disability; or having eyesight of 5/200 or less in both eyes, or a visual field contracted to 5 degrees or less
  • Have a net worth below $163,699, a calculation that includes the claimant's and dependents' assets and income for VA purposes and excludes the primary residence, the car, and basic home items

The VA enforces a 3-year look-back on assets transferred for less than fair market value before filing. A surviving spouse can qualify under the Survivors Pension using the same net worth limit.

Using Aid and Attendance to Pay a Family Caregiver for In-Home Care in Colorado

Many families want to keep care in the family, and there are two ways VA benefits make that possible. First, because Aid and Attendance is cash paid to the veteran, the veteran can simply use it to pay a relative who provides care.

Second, the Veteran-Directed Care (VDC) program gives an enrolled veteran a flexible budget, managed by the veteran or their representative, to hire and supervise their own workers so they can keep living at home or in their community. Through that budget, enrolled veterans may also hire family, friends, and/or neighbors to provide services. VDC is open to an enrolled veteran who is eligible for community care and meets the clinical criteria for the service, where the program is available. VA medical centers deliver it through aging and disability network agencies, such as an Area Agency on Aging, where an options counselor handles the assessment and care planning, arranges fiscal management services, and provides ongoing support. Before you count on a particular arrangement, ask your County Veterans Service Officer or the VA social worker handling the referral to confirm it for your situation. To ask about VDC, contact your local VA medical center's social work or geriatrics department; you can find the nearest one at va.gov/find-locations.

How Aid and Attendance Works with Colorado Medicaid

A Colorado senior can potentially receive both VA pension with Aid and Attendance and Health First Colorado (the state's Medicaid program, administered by the Department of Health Care Policy & Financing) long-term care, but the two programs interact and must be coordinated. On the VA side, pension eligibility turns on yearly family income and net worth meeting limits Congress sets, and paying for care can lower the income the VA counts.

How that VA money is treated on the Medicaid side is governed by Medicaid rules rather than VA rules. At the eligibility step, Colorado applies SSI methodology, and SSA states that VA aid and attendance allowances are not income for SSI purposes. Colorado's own Medical Services Board rule, 10 CCR 2505-10 § 8.100.5.K, says the same thing directly: the Aid and Attendance and Unusual Medical Expenses portion of a VA pension, as determined by the VA, is not counted as income when determining eligibility. Eligibility is only the first step. For a veteran or surviving spouse in a medical facility other than a State Veterans Home, the same rule says that portion is not used as patient payment to the facility; a State Veterans Home resident with no dependents is the exception, and there it is used as patient payment. Those patient-payment provisions, and the federal post-eligibility rule for medical institutions, are written for facility residents; the federal rule by its own terms does not set the post-eligibility rules for home- and community-based waiver services. Because the treatment for someone receiving care at home is fact-specific, confirm the interaction with a County Veterans Service Officer, Health First Colorado, or an accredited benefits counselor, and do not assume either that the two stack at full value or that one cancels the other.

How to Apply and Get Free Help

To apply for Aid and Attendance, submit VA Form 21-2680 (Examination for Housebound Status or Permanent Need for Regular Aid and Attendance), whose examination section a medical examiner fills out to document the need for help. That form covers Aid and Attendance that will be added to your monthly compensation or pension benefits, so it is not limited to pension recipients. The application steps that follow are the pension route: the VA's condition is that you may be eligible for this benefit if you get a VA pension. A wartime veteran pursuing that route who is not already receiving a VA pension also files VA Form 21P-527EZ (Application for Veterans Pension), the wartime, means-tested pension application. You can file online at VA.gov, by mail to the VA Pension Intake Center, in person at a VA regional office, or through an accredited representative. Asked how long a decision takes, the VA answers "It depends"; it works claims in the order it receives them, unless a claim requires priority processing.

Don't do this alone. Every Colorado county has a Veterans Service Office that offers free assistance, and its service officers specialize in helping veterans and their family members with claims, applications, and appeals to the VA. The Colorado Division of Veterans Affairs strongly recommends that anyone thinking about submitting an application to the VA contact their County Veterans Service Office first.

If the VA Denies Your Claim

If the VA denies your Aid and Attendance claim or approves it for less than you expected, you have three decision review options. You can file a Supplemental Claim with new and relevant evidence the VA didn't have before, request a Higher-Level Review by a higher-level reviewer (no new evidence), or take a Board Appeal to the Board of Veterans' Appeals for review by a Veterans Law Judge. You elect one of these reviews, not two at the same time: under 38 CFR 3.2500(b), once you have filed one you cannot file for a different one on the same claim or issue while that review is pending final adjudication, so the choice is worth getting right the first time. A Higher-Level Review or a Board Appeal generally has to be elected within one year of the date the VA issued notice of the decision, though a simultaneously contested claim (several people claiming a benefit only one can receive) allows only a Board Appeal, within 60 days; a Supplemental Claim can otherwise be filed at any time after that notice. But waiting has a price: a Supplemental Claim the VA receives more than one year after the date on the decision notice takes an effective date no earlier than the date the VA receives it, and continuous pursuit of the claim is broken unless the VA grants an extension of the one-year period for good cause. Filing after the one-year mark can cost back pay all the way to the original claim date, so file inside the year even though the door stays open. A County Veterans Service Officer can prepare and file the review for free, the same as with the original claim. Compare the three lanes at va.gov/decision-reviews.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Aid and Attendance to pay for a home health aide in Colorado?

Yes. Aid and Attendance is paid as cash to the veteran, who can use it for a home health aide, a homemaker, or other in-home care. With in-home care in Colorado running about $94,952 a year, a pension ceiling of $29,093 a year for a veteran alone (or $34,488 with one dependent) covers part of the cost, and countable income lowers what is actually paid.,

Does the VA provide the in-home care directly?

No. The VA pays the veteran a monthly cash benefit; the veteran arranges and pays for the care. That's what makes the benefit flexible enough to cover an agency aide or a family caregiver.

Can my income be too high to qualify if I'm paying for care?

Often not. Out-of-pocket in-home care counts as an unreimbursed medical expense that lowers the income the VA counts, but only the portion above $872 a year for a veteran with no spouse or child (more with dependents) is deductible. Large care bills can reduce countable income enough to qualify.

Can I get both Aid and Attendance and Colorado Medicaid?

Yes, the two are separate programs and can be received together, though they must be coordinated. Colorado's Medicaid rule does not count the Aid and Attendance portion of a VA pension as income when it decides eligibility. Because the treatment is fact-specific, confirm with a County Veterans Service Officer, Health First Colorado, or an accredited benefits counselor.

Compare Care Settings in Colorado

Aid and Attendance can help pay for any care setting. See how it works for the others:

Learn More

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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.

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