Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance in Wyoming ($50.00/Month)

Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: In Wyoming, a Medicaid nursing-facility resident’s Personal Needs Allowance is $50.00/Month; 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. Wyoming Dept. of Health, Medicaid Eligibility Online Manual (EOM), Section M906: Completing Medical Assistance Computations states the figure directly.

Why Wyoming’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. Wyoming has done exactly that, setting $50.00/Month, effective page states effective 7/1/2023, last reviewed 10/19/2023.

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

Table 1A (Wyoming’s main income/deduction standards table) does not separately list a PNA line; the figure lives in this procedural manual section instead.

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.