Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: Yes. Delaware participates in the federal Long-Term Care Partnership Program, using a dollar-for-dollar asset-protection model, under Delaware Division of Medicaid and Medical Assistance / Delaware Dept. of Insurance Qualified State Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership Program (16 Del. Admin. Code, Title 16).
How the asset protection works
Delaware uses a dollar-for-dollar asset-protection model: an amount of Medicaid-countable assets equal to what a qualified Partnership policy actually paid out is protected (disregarded) both when applying for Medicaid and later in Medicaid estate recovery. Delaware Division of Medicaid and Medical Assistance / Delaware Dept. of Insurance Qualified State Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership Program (16 Del. Admin. Code, Title 16) is the governing citation.
What the state itself says about moving
Delaware’s own program materials address this directly, describing it this way: DMMA will accept partnership policies issued in other States with qualified long-term care insurance partnership programs.
Which policies qualify
Delaware’s own materials tie the program to policies issued on or after 2011 (or the date its state plan amendment took effect that year). A long-term care policy bought before that cutoff is not automatically Partnership-qualified in Delaware even if it otherwise looks similar; the policy’s own rider or outline of coverage should say “Partnership” or “Qualified State Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership” explicitly.
Estate recovery, not just eligibility
The federal rule requires the same protected amount to be disregarded twice: once when Delaware decides Medicaid eligibility, and again later if Delaware pursues Medicaid estate recovery against the person’s estate. A Partnership-qualified policy is doing two jobs, not one; see how estate recovery itself works in Delaware.
A note on sourcing: DOI bulletin PDF fetched only as unreadable binary; text reconstructed from Cornell LII’s reproduction of the same Delaware regulation. This session’s own archived copy of the Delaware DOI bulletin (a scanned PDF with no extractable text layer) and a second attempt at regulations.delaware.gov (a JavaScript-rendered page not readable via a plain fetch) both failed to yield confirmable text for this exact sentence, so no verbatim quote is republished here; participation and the dollar-for-dollar model are still corroborated by Cornell LII’s mirror of the same Delaware regulation, used for the citation only.
| Federal Partnership framework itself | 20 years old (in place since February 8, 2006) |
| Federal inflation-protection buyer-age brackets | compound protection required under age 61; some protection required age 61 to age 76 |
| Delaware’s own cutoff (since 2011) | 15 years old |
| This state’s core mechanism | protects $1 of assets for every $1 the policy pays out |
| State citation | Delaware Division of Medicaid and Medical Assistance / Delaware Dept. of Insurance Qualified State Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership Program (16 Del. Admin. Code, Title 16) |
| Federal authority | 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(b), Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 |
| Participates | Yes |
| Confidence | Medium |
For the federal rules behind this state page, see how Partnership reciprocity works when you move states and why inflation protection is a condition of staying Partnership-qualified.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Insurance Department, Medicaid agency, statute, or administrative code this session (or, where that site could not be reached, from an independently cross-checked legal-database mirror of the same codified text, disclosed below). General information, not insurance, legal, or tax advice on any specific policy or application; program rules and reciprocity agreements can change, and your state’s Insurance Department or Medicaid agency has the final say.