Pennsylvania Medicaid Transfer Penalty Divisor: $421.20 a Day

Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Pennsylvania divides uncompensated transfers by a DAILY figure, not a monthly one. Chapter 440 Appendix A of the state’s Long-Term Care Handbook publishes $421.20 a day effective 1/1/2026, with $12,811.50 shown beside it as the monthly equivalent.

What Pennsylvania publishes

How the penalty period is calculated

• For an application made on or after February 8, 2006, the period of ineligibility is the total cumulative uncompensated value of all assets disposed of by the applicant or the applicant’s spouse on or after the look-back date, divided by the average daily private pay rate in effect at the time the application is processed.
• For a person already receiving benefits who disposes of assets on or after March 3, 2007, the same regulation anchors the divisor to a different moment: the average daily private pay rate in effect at the time the period of ineligibility is determined.
• The county assistance office will not include transfers totaling $500 or less in a calendar month.
• Once a penalty period is established it continues to apply even if the individual is discharged from the facility or is no longer receiving services.
• Because the divisor is a daily rate, the handbook’s worked examples divide a lump sum by that daily figure and express the answer as a number of days.

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

What this page does not settle

• The regulation names a DAILY rate and Appendix A prints a daily column and a monthly column side by side. Those two routes do not produce the same answer once the remainder is handled, and it is the daily figure the regulation points at.
• The published series does not move in one direction: $482.50 on 1/1/2022, $423.11 on 1/1/2023, $379.65 on 1/1/2024, $399.80 on 1/1/2025 and $421.20 on 1/1/2026. Appendix A prints the figures and does not explain the fall in the middle years.
• Two different anchoring moments sit in the same regulation – the rate in effect when the application is PROCESSED, for an applicant, and the rate in effect when the penalty is DETERMINED, for someone already receiving benefits. Which applies depends on which of those two situations the person is in.
• Appendix A carries one update stamp and replaces the previous table wholesale, so a copy read at another time can show a different set of rates.
• At the time of reading, the state served this handbook over plain HTTP with no TLS, which is why the first two source links below are http:// addresses.

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

• Pennsylvania Long-Term Care Handbook, Chapter 440 Appendix A (the figures)
• Pennsylvania Long-Term Care Handbook 440.8, Disposition of Assets and Fair Consideration (the method, and the sentence that names Appendix A)
• 55 Pa. Code 178.104a, Disposition of assets and fair consideration provisions for transfers on or after February 8, 2006 (the regulation)

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.