Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: no. Kentucky’s Medicaid HCB Waiver, in its own CMS-approved application, states plainly that “the settings in this waiver are non-residential”: assisted living and other residential-care facilities are excluded by design, not merely unfunded. A separate, non-Medicaid state program (State Supplementation, 921 KAR 2:015) pays toward room and board in licensed personal care homes instead.
What Kentucky covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Home and Community Based Waiver (HCB Waiver), CMS control number KY.0144.R08.00 |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | No: “The settings in this waiver are non-residential and include individual homes and apartments and Adult Day Health Centers.” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Kentucky 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. Kentucky’s own materials say the same thing directly: “In accordance with 42 CFR §441.310(a)(2), FFP is not claimed for the cost of room and board except when: (a) provided as part of respite services in a facility approved by the State that is not a private residence or (b) claimed as a portion of the rent and food that may be reasonably attributed to an unrelated caregiver who resides in the same household as the participant, as provided in Appendix I.” (Kentucky HCB Waiver CMS 1915(c) application, Appendix C-5).
The waitlist
Waitlisted: placement is application-date order; no published headcount
Paying for care is the harder half
What a waiver covers is only part of the problem, because room and board still has to come from somewhere, and an adviser can look at income, savings and the likely timeline together before a placement decision is made.
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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
Kentucky’s Medicaid waiver does not serve people in assisted living settings at all, so there is no Medicaid AL-specific personal needs allowance to report; the $60/month figure found (907 KAR 20:035) is the institutional nursing-facility PNA, not an assisted-living figure, and is not reported as the page’s headline PNA for that reason. No published current waitlist headcount was found.
Sources
- Kentucky CHFS: HCB Waiver CMS 1915(c) application (231 pages, read directly)
- 921 KAR 2:015: State Supplementation regulation
Read September 3, 2026.
Same question, other states: Louisiana · Maine.
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: Kentucky’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.