Colorado Medicaid Transfer Penalty Divisor: $10,814 a Month

Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Colorado does not divide by a single statewide survey figure. Its rule divides by the AVERAGE OF FOUR REGIONAL private-pay rates, and the state publishes that average as $10,814 a month effective January 1, 2026. The four regional figures sit on the same page, and their mean reproduces the published average to the cent.

What Colorado publishes

How the penalty period is calculated

• The fair market value of the transferred asset, less the actual amount received if any, is divided by the average of the regions’ monthly private pay cost for Long-Term Care institution care in the state of Colorado at the time of application. The resulting number is the number of months of ineligibility.
• The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing calculates the average rates for those regions on an annual, calendar-year basis, and the regions are the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regions.
• The look-back period is the number of months before the month of application for long-term care services that the department will consider for transfers.
• For transfers on or after February 8, 2006 the total amounts of all of the transfers are added together.
• If a previous penalty period has completely expired, the transfers are not added together. If it has not expired, the new penalty period begins the first day after the prior penalty period expires.

Once you have the figure above, the Medicaid penalty period calculator does the arithmetic. This page is the Colorado rate record; the calculator is the class parent.

What this page does not settle

• The table carrying these figures is headed Nursing Facility Income Trust Gross Limits and Average Private Pay Rate, so each regional number does double duty: it is also that region’s income-trust gross income limit.
• The mean of the four 2026 regional figures is $10,814.6425 and the state publishes $10,814; the mean of the four 2025 figures is $10,475.115 against a published $10,475.11. That arithmetic is done here, not by the state – it is shown because it is the check that proves the two-column table was read down the right column. The state truncates rather than rounds, and it drops the cents only in the 2026 row.
• The state prints the 2026 average with a stray space and no cents, and prints Region III’s 2026 figure without a thousands separator. Those are the memo’s own typography.
• The regulation prints no dollar figure at all. It defines the four regions and defers the number to the department’s annual calculation, which is why the memo is the document that carries it – and that memo is titled as the annual Social Security cost-of-living update, which is not where a reader would think to look.
• A person’s own region does not change the divisor: the rule divides by the average of the regions, not by the region the applicant lives in. The regional figures matter for the income-trust limit instead.

Eligibility is decided by the state agency on the whole file, not by this one number. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should transfer, retitle or give away property on the strength of a worksheet.

Sources

• Colorado HCPF Operational Memo 25-073, page 3, Nursing Facility Income Trust Gross Limits and Average Private Pay Rate (the figures)
• 10 CCR 2505-10 section 8.100.7, Medical Assistance Eligibility – transfers without fair consideration, and the definition of the four regions (the method)

Each source above was retrieved and read against the state text on August 27, 2026. Every figure on this page was checked against those bytes.