Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: In Louisiana, a Medicaid nursing-facility resident’s Personal Needs Allowance is $50.00/Month (statutory floor); the amount of their own income they keep for personal use each month, with the rest going to the facility as the patient-pay amount toward the cost of care. That is well above the $30/month federal floor set in 1988 and never raised since. Louisiana Revised Statutes Section 40:2009.45 (Acts 2025, No. 259, Section 1) states the figure directly.
Why Louisiana’s figure isn’t the federal floor
Federal Medicaid law requires only a $30-a-month personal needs allowance as a floor; a state is free to set its own, higher figure by statute, regulation, or agency policy. Louisiana has done exactly that, setting $50.00/Month (statutory floor), effective June 11, 2025.
What the allowance covers, and what it doesn’t
The personal needs allowance pays for the things a facility’s daily rate doesn’t cover: clothing, haircuts, snacks, a phone or television, small personal purchases. It is deducted before the rest of a resident’s income is applied to the facility bill as the patient-pay (or post-eligibility treatment of income, PETI) amount. It is not extra money on top of what Medicaid already pays the facility; it is the one slice of a resident’s own income that Medicaid rules guarantee the resident, not the facility, keeps.
One exception or caveat worth knowing
This is a statutory minimum, not confirmed to be the exact administratively-set figure: Louisiana Dept. of Health’s own eligibility manual (H-800) was unreachable (403 on every ldh.la.gov URL tried). Secondary sources indicate the prior figure was $38/month before this 2025 law took effect.
| Citation | Louisiana Revised Statutes Section 40:2009.45 (Acts 2025, No. 259, Section 1) |
| What it says | “The Louisiana Department of Health shall set the monthly personal needs allowance for an institutionalized individual to an amount not less than fifty dollars” |
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a rule amendment, and a facility or state caseworker has the final say on any individual case.