Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: yes, through New Choices Waiver (NCW): Adult Residential Services-Assisted Living. Medicaid does not pay the facility’s room and board either way; only the care and service component.
What Utah covers
| Waiver / state plan option | New Choices Waiver (NCW): Adult Residential Services-Assisted Living |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | Yes: “Adult Residential Service-Assisted Living includes any combination of the following services at the amount, duration and frequency assessed to be needed by the participant and approved by NCW.” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Utah or any state; see below. |
The room-and-board split
Federal law is the floor every state builds on: “The Secretary may by waiver provide that a State plan approved under this subchapter may include as “medical assistance” under such plan payment for part or all of the cost of home or community-based services (other than room and board) approved by the Secretary” (42 U.S.C. §1396n(c)(1), Social Security Act §1915(c)). The words in parentheses do the work: whatever a state’s waiver pays for inside an assisted living community, it is not the rent, the meals, or the room itself. That portion stays the resident’s own to fund, out of income, savings, or a family contribution; the waiver only ever reaches the care and service layer on top of it. Utah’s own materials say the same thing directly: “This service does not cover 24-hour skilled care or supervision, room and board, items of comfort or convenience, or the costs of facility maintenance, upkeep, and improvement.” (Utah Medicaid New Choices Waiver: Description of Services).
The waitlist
Open (no enrollment limiting currently anticipated per state fact sheet) : “New Choices Waiver does not anticipate exceeding the waiver participant cap and limiting enrollment.”
What you get to keep: the personal needs allowance
Not published in the materials reviewed this session. This is the amount of a waiver participant’s own income the state lets them keep for personal spending after the rest goes toward the cost of their care; it varies by state because each state sets its own figure inside the federal floor.
What this doesn’t answer
The Description of Services document and the state’s own 1915(c) fact sheet both confirm assisted living is a covered NCW setting/service and that room and board is excluded from the service, and the fact sheet states the waiver does not currently anticipate a cap-driven waitlist. No primary Utah Medicaid document opened this session stated a personal needs allowance dollar figure specific to New Choices Waiver assisted living participants, so the personal needs allowance is marked unverified rather than pulled from an aggregator estimate.
Sources
- Utah Medicaid New Choices Waiver: Description of Services
- Utah Medicaid New Choices Waiver: Fact Sheet (1915(c) HCBS Waiver Information), Utah DHHS Office of LTSS
- Utah Medicaid New Choices Waiver program page
Read September 4, 2026.
Same question, other states: Vermont · Virginia.
Related: what assisted living actually costs · assisted living vs. staying home vs. a CCRC · why home care has a waitlist and a nursing home doesn’t.
General information drawn from each state’s own Medicaid agency and federal statute, not legal, tax or financial advice. Medicaid is administered state by state; waiver names, coverage decisions, waitlists and allowance amounts change by state budget and legislative action. This page cannot see your own state’s current caseload. We are not a law firm, a benefits counselor, or a fiduciary, and this is not personalized advice. We sell nothing on this page and earn nothing from it.
Related: Utah’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.