Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: In New York, 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. “Raise The Personal Needs Allowance (PNA)”: New York State Office for the Aging states the figure directly.
Why New York’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. New York has done exactly that, setting $50.00/Month.
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
The codified regulation is 18 NYCRR 360-4.9(a)(1), which provides for a $50 personal needs allowance for a resident of a residential health care facility (text read via Cornell LII); also confirmed via the NYS Office for the Aging, a state government agency page.
| Citation | “Raise The Personal Needs Allowance (PNA)”: New York State Office for the Aging |
| What it says | “The current Personal Needs Allowance is just $50.” |
Figures verified against 18 NYCRR 360-4.9 (Cornell LII copy of the regulation), the NYS Office for the Aging PNA page and 42 U.S.C. 1396a(q) (Cornell LII) on September 30, 2026.
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.