Medicaid & Long-Term Care Calculators
Ten free calculators covering eligibility, long-term care, spend-down, look-back rules, community spouse allowance, estate recovery risk, dual-eligible status, and nursing home costs — built on official CMS and state Medicaid data.
Medicaid is the program most likely to actually pay for long-term nursing home or in-home care — Medicare generally doesn't, beyond short post-hospital stretches — which makes it the highest-stakes program on this site for families facing a care decision. It's also the most state-specific: income limits, asset limits, and estate recovery rules vary by state, sometimes significantly. These tools are built to explain the federal framework clearly while flagging exactly where your state's rules will change the answer.
Do You Qualify?
Medicaid eligibility for seniors runs on two separate tracks: regular Medicaid (income and asset limits for general coverage) and long-term care Medicaid (which pays for nursing home or home-based care and has its own, often more complex, rules — including counting a spouse's assets differently through spousal impoverishment protections). Start with the Medicaid Eligibility Calculator for the general picture, then the Long-Term Care Eligibility Estimator if nursing home or in-home care is the immediate need. If you're already on Medicare, the Dual-Eligible Checker shows whether you also qualify for Medicaid's additional cost-sharing help — and if you already are dual eligible, our explainer on D-SNP plans covers the integration levels and 2025 enrollment rule changes that the checker's UI can't fully get into. If you're married and only one spouse needs care, the Community Spouse Allowance Calculator shows exactly how much the spouse staying home is protected from having to spend down — our full explainer also covers the "snapshot date" rule that determines when those protected amounts actually get calculated.
If You're Over the Limit: Spend-Down and the Look-Back Period
Having income or assets above Medicaid's limit doesn't automatically disqualify you. Spend-down lets you become eligible by spending the excess on allowable costs — medical bills in particular — until you're within the limit. Separately, if long-term care is involved, Medicaid reviews the five years before your application for asset transfers made below fair value; find those, and it can trigger a penalty period during which Medicaid won't pay. This trips up more families than almost anything else in elder care planning, usually because a gift or transfer was made years earlier for reasons that had nothing to do with Medicaid. Use the Spend-Down Calculator and Look-Back Period Calculator to understand where you stand before, not after, applying — and see our full explainers on spend-down myths and the look-back penalty math for the details behind each calculator.
What Will Care Actually Cost?
Nursing home and assisted living costs vary enormously by state and region, and understanding the real number is usually what pushes the eligibility question from abstract to urgent. The Nursing Home Cost Calculator and Senior Care Cost Calculator use state-level cost data to estimate what private-pay care would run, which is also the number that makes Medicaid's role clear: it's often the only realistic way to sustain that cost over time. Assisted living specifically works differently from a nursing home under Medicaid — our explainer covers why Medicaid never pays room and board there, and why the care-services coverage it does offer isn't guaranteed the way nursing home Medicaid is.
Related Costs People Miss
Some Medicaid-adjacent benefits are easy to overlook because they're narrower in scope — dental and denture coverage for seniors is a common gap in both Medicare and private plans, and several states run dedicated grant programs to help cover it. Check the Denture & Dental Grant Finder if that's a cost you're facing.
What Happens to the Estate Afterward?
Beyond eligibility and cost, the question families ask most is what happens after — specifically, whether the state can recover costs from the home once the recipient passes away. Federal law guarantees several protections that block or delay this (a living spouse, certain dependent children, and narrower home-specific protections for a qualifying sibling or caregiver child), and they're identical in every state even though the rest of each state's recovery program varies. The Estate Recovery Risk Checker walks through which of those protections currently apply to your situation, and our full explainer on estate recovery covers the law behind it in more depth.
Every Medicaid Tool
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Medicaid the same as Medicare?
No. Medicare is a federal health insurance program based on age or disability, largely independent of income. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program based on income and asset limits. Many seniors qualify for both at once, known as being dual-eligible.
What is the Medicaid look-back period?
It's a review window, generally five years, during which Medicaid checks for asset transfers made for less than fair value before you applied for long-term care coverage. Transfers found during that window can trigger a penalty period of ineligibility.
Will Medicaid take my house?
Your home is usually exempt while you're alive if certain conditions are met, but states can recover long-term care costs from your estate after death through Medicaid Estate Recovery, which can include the home. Rules and exemptions vary significantly by state.
What is spend-down and how does it work?
Spend-down lets applicants whose income or assets exceed Medicaid's limit become eligible by spending the excess on allowable expenses, such as medical bills, until they fall within the limit — similar in concept to meeting a deductible.
This page is for general educational purposes and is not affiliated with Medicaid.gov, CMS, or any state Medicaid agency. Medicaid rules vary by state — see our Data Sources page for how we source figures, and confirm details with your state Medicaid office before making decisions.