Around-the-clock nursing home care runs about $294 a day for a semi-private room in Indiana, roughly $107,310 a year. That is below the national median of about $315 a day, but it still adds up to more than $100,000 a year. So the real question is which funding source applies to you, and in what order. This guide lays out how to pay for senior care in Indiana in 2026.

You can combine several sources. Private savings can cover care while you line up Indiana Medicaid, VA benefits, or insurance.

In This Guide

How to Pay for Senior Care in Indiana: Your Options

There are five main ways to pay. Each one covers something different, and you can use more than one.

Payer What It Does What It Doesn't Do
Out of pocket Your own income and savings, spent on the care you choose No help with the bill: a semi-private nursing home room runs about $107,310 a year in Indiana
Medicare Up to 100 days of skilled nursing facility care per benefit period, after a qualifying hospital stay No long-term custodial care, including in assisted living or a nursing home
Medicaid (nursing facility and waivers) Nursing home care, and home- and community-based waiver services that may include assisted living Strict income and asset limits apply
VA Aid and Attendance A higher maximum annual VA pension rate for veterans who meet wartime-service and need tests, and for surviving spouses Only for those who qualify for the pension and need another person's help
Long-term care insurance Personal and custodial care at home, in the community, or in a facility, up to the policy's limits Only if a policy is already in force, and it pays only after a benefit trigger and elimination period

What Senior Care Costs in Indiana

Know what you're paying for before you work out how to pay. The figures below come from the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey, released in March 2026 from rates gathered between July and November 2025. Indiana runs at or below the national medians in every category but one: adult day health care, where it is the 13th most expensive state in the country.

Care Type Cost What It Is
Non-medical caregiver (in-home) About $35/hour (Indiana) Help with daily activities, meals, and errands
Private-duty nurse (in-home) About $70/hour, roughly $175/visit (Indiana) Skilled nursing care at home
Adult day care About $127/day, $33,020/year (Indiana); U.S. median about $95/day Daytime supervision and activities
Assisted living About $5,639/month, $67,665/year (Indiana); U.S. median about $6,200/month Room, board, and personal care
Nursing home (semi-private) About $294/day, $107,310/year (Indiana); U.S. median about $315/day Skilled, around-the-clock care
Nursing home (private room) About $10,326/month, $123,918/year (Indiana); U.S. median about $129,575/year Private room, skilled care

The 2025 survey merged the old "homemaker" and "home health aide" categories into a single non-medical caregiver rate, about $35 an hour in Indiana. Because CareScout collects rates by metropolitan area, what you pay varies within Indiana, and these are industry-survey medians rather than government figures. Even at the state median, each year in a semi-private nursing home room costs about $107,310. That is why families combine the funding sources below. For a fuller breakdown, see our cost of senior care in Indiana guide.

Paying Out of Pocket

This is where the money comes from until another payer steps in: Social Security, pensions, retirement savings, and home equity. It also carries the bill while a Medicaid application is pending, and Indiana says a complete application can take up to 90 days to be decided.

A few private-pay tools Indiana families use:

  • Home equity. Sell the home, rent it out, or borrow against it. A federally insured reverse mortgage (a HECM) requires the borrower to be 62 or older and the home to be their principal residence, and the loan balance grows each month, so it must eventually be repaid, usually by selling the home. Indiana Medicaid generally does not count the home you live in as an asset, so weigh any move against a future Medicaid plan first.
  • Life insurance. Some policies include an accelerated death benefit, and many insurers now offer the option, so ask the agent or company whether yours has it. You are usually eligible only if it was added before a terminal illness, so don't count on adding it once care is needed. Whatever is paid out is subtracted from what beneficiaries later receive. A policy can also sometimes be sold to an investor in a life settlement, though the proceeds may be taxed. Either move can affect Medicaid eligibility, so check before you act.
  • Retirement and investment accounts. These are not on Indiana's list of exempt assets, so they count toward Medicaid's $2,000 asset limit for a single applicant. Plan how you spend them with a later Medicaid application in mind.

The hard truth: at about $107,310 a year for a semi-private nursing home room in Indiana, private pay is best treated as a bridge. Our guides to paying for in-home care and paying for assisted living cover the options in more depth.

What Medicare Does and Doesn't Cover

This is where families get caught off guard. Medicare does not pay for long-term custodial care: ongoing help with daily activities like bathing and dressing, when that is the only care needed.,

What Medicare does cover is limited and medical:

  • Skilled nursing facility care for up to 100 days after a qualifying three-day hospital stay. Days 1 through 20 cost $0 a day after you pay the $1,736 Part A deductible, so they aren't free outright, though you'll normally have already paid it for the hospital stay in the same benefit period. Days 21 through 100 require a daily coinsurance of $217 in 2026. After day 100, nothing.
  • Home health care when a doctor or allowed practitioner sets up a plan of care, the person needs part-time or intermittent skilled nursing or therapy, is certified homebound, and gets the care from a Medicare-certified home health agency.
  • Hospice care when the person's doctors certify a life expectancy of 6 months or less and the person chooses comfort care instead of treatment for the terminal illness.

If you were told there was no qualifying three-day stay, do not stop there. Time spent under observation or in the emergency room before admission does not count toward the three days, even overnight, and that trap can cost a family the benefit. Medicare names four ways around it:

  • A waiver. You may not need the three-day minimum if the doctor participates in an Accountable Care Organization approved for a Skilled Nursing Facility 3-Day Rule Waiver, and a Medicare Advantage plan may also waive it.
  • Re-entry. If you re-enter the same or another SNF within 30 days of leaving one, you do not need another three-day qualifying hospital stay. The same is true if skilled care stops in the SNF and starts again within 30 days.
  • An appeal, with its deadline attached. If the hospital changed your status from inpatient to outpatient getting observation services, you have a right to appeal, and an approved appeal means Part A may cover the hospital and SNF services. While you are still in the hospital, or for an admission on or after February 14, 2025, that is the prospective fast-appeal track and it is open. For a stay that already happened between January 1, 2009 and February 13, 2025, the retrospective track's 365-day filing window ended January 2, 2026: a later request is denied unless you establish good cause for filing late, and a request that gives no reason for the delay will not be accepted. If that describes you, file immediately with the good-cause explanation attached.
  • Another payer. Ask whether care in another setting, such as home health, or another program such as Medicaid or VA benefits, can cover the SNF stay instead.

What Medicare does not pay for is long-term care, which Medicare.gov describes as help with daily activities at home, in adult day health care, in an assisted living facility, or in a nursing home. Medicare.gov points to Medicaid or private long-term care insurance instead, and families also rely on VA benefits and private pay.,

How to Pay for Senior Care in Indiana Through Medicaid

Indiana Medicaid covers long-term care for Hoosiers who meet its eligibility rules. It is administered by the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), with eligibility processed by the Division of Family Resources (DFR). For Hoosiers aged 60 and older on Medicaid, care now runs through Indiana PathWays for Aging, the state's managed-care program, launched in 2024.

Indiana Medicaid covers nursing home care, and its home- and community-based waivers offer an alternative to a nursing facility. Waiver services may include attendant care, adult day service, assisted living, home-delivered meals, and home modifications. To qualify for a waiver, a person must meet a nursing facility level of care as well as Medicaid's financial rules, and the member's case manager identifies the specific services, which are then listed on the member's plan of care.

Who Qualifies in 2026

Indiana is an income-cap state. The rules are strict.

  • Income: up to $2,982 a month for nursing-facility or waiver coverage in 2026 (300% of the federal SSI benefit rate). The limit counts the applicant's own income only, not a spouse's.
  • Assets: up to $2,000 in countable assets for a single applicant; $3,000 for a married couple. When one spouse is in a nursing home and the other lives at home, the nursing-home spouse is held to the $2,000 limit. Indiana exempts the home when a spouse, a child under 18, or a disabled or blind child lives there, or when the applicant is expected to return home, along with household furnishings, personal effects, burial spaces, and an irrevocable burial or funeral trust tied to specific services. One vehicle of any value is exempt only if it is used for the applicant's employment or medical treatment, modified to accommodate a disability, or kept for the at-home spouse; otherwise Indiana exempts $5,000 of its current market value. A separate equity bar blocks long-term-care coverage when home equity tops $752,000, but it does not apply while a spouse, a child under 21, or a blind or disabled child lawfully lives in the home.
  • Spousal protection: the at-home spouse can keep half of the couple's non-exempt assets up to $162,660, or at least a minimum of $32,532, whichever is greater (the Community Spouse Resource Allowance), so they are not left with nothing. That top figure is a standard, not an absolute cap: a fair hearing or a court order can let the at-home spouse keep more.

Being over the income cap does not have to shut you out. An applicant whose income exceeds $2,982 a month is not eligible unless they have a valid Qualified Income Trust (also called a Miller Trust). Say a single applicant's Social Security and a small pension put her a couple hundred dollars over the cap. With a valid Qualified Income Trust, she can still qualify. Setting one up correctly matters, so ask the DFR or an elder-law attorney how it works in Indiana.

For waiver services, start with one of Indiana's 16 Area Agencies on Aging, which makes the first level-of-care determination; you also have to apply for Medicaid itself. You apply for Medicaid through the FSSA Benefits Portal (fssabenefits.in.gov), at a local Division of Family Resources office, by mail, or by calling the DFR at 1-800-403-0864. A complete application can take up to 90 days to be decided.

Indiana also applies the federal 60-month look-back. Assets given away or sold for less than fair value in the 60 months before applying can trigger a penalty period, when Medicaid will not pay for long-term care, though some transfers, such as those to a spouse, are exempt. The penalty's length is the value given away divided by the state's average monthly private-pay cost of nursing-facility care, so ask the DFR or an elder-law attorney to estimate it for your case. For the full picture, see our guides to Indiana Medicaid income limits, how to apply for Indiana Medicaid, and Indiana Medicaid estate recovery.

Not sure whether your parent qualifies for Indiana Medicaid? Chat with Brevy's care navigator at brevy.com.

VA Aid and Attendance for Veterans

If your loved one is a wartime veteran or the surviving spouse of one, VA Aid and Attendance can be a real funding source. It comes with the VA pension, so a veteran first has to qualify for the pension: service that includes at least one day during a wartime period, no dishonorable discharge, being 65 or older or meeting one of VA's disability tests, and income and net worth within VA's limits. Then at least one aid-and-attendance need must apply, such as needing another person's help with daily activities like bathing, feeding, and dressing. In VA's rate tables, Aid and Attendance carries a higher maximum annual pension rate than the basic pension, and Housebound is a separate status with its own rate.

The VA sets these maximums as annual amounts, and each is a ceiling rather than a check: VA pays the difference between the maximum and the claimant's income for VA purposes, so a veteran with other income receives less. For the rate year that began December 1, 2025, the maximum annual pension rates with Aid and Attendance are:

The pension is paid monthly: VA subtracts countable income from the maximum rate, divides the result by 12, and rounds down to the whole dollar.

Aid and Attendance is need-based. The actual payment is the maximum rate minus countable income, and only unreimbursed medical costs above 5% of the maximum rate can be subtracted from that income. The 2026 net worth limit is $163,699, and VA's net worth calculation counts the claimant's and their dependents' assets and income for VA purposes, so comparing savings alone against that limit gives the wrong answer. What VA leaves out of assets is the home you live in, your car, and basic home items like appliances, so a paid-off home does not by itself push anyone over the limit. VA also looks back 36 months from the day it receives the pension claim at assets transferred for less than fair market value, though the look-back never reaches a date before October 18, 2018., Not every such transfer is penalized: it has to be an asset that, had it been kept, would have pushed net worth over the limit, and then VA can impose a penalty period of up to five years. Check it early.

Long-Term Care Insurance

Did your family member buy a long-term care policy years ago? If they did, that changes everything. Dig it out now. Read the benefit triggers, the daily maximum, and the waiting period before you need them. These policies cover personal and custodial care at home, in the community, or in a facility, and most pay costs up to a pre-set daily limit until a lifetime maximum is reached. Most pay benefits when the insured needs help with two or more of six activities of daily living or has a cognitive impairment, as judged by the insurer's own assessment.

Some policies are part of the federal and state Long-Term Care Partnership Program. Indiana says the asset protection a Partnership policy earns is meant to protect the policyholder's countable assets, the kind that would otherwise count against Medicaid's $2,000 limit, and Partnership policyholders are also exempt from Indiana's home-equity bar. Buying a new policy later is harder: most individual policies require medical underwriting, so someone in poor health or already receiving long-term care may not qualify, and the price depends on age at purchase. So this is mainly a tool for people who bought in earlier. If a policy exists, treat it as central, and time a Medicaid application around when its benefits run out. Our guide to long-term care insurance explains how these policies work.

Other Ways to Pay for Senior Care in Indiana

A few smaller levers can stretch a budget, though none replaces the main sources above. Get advice before using the ones with lasting consequences.

  • Home modifications through a Medicaid waiver. For people on the PathWays or Health and Wellness waiver, authorized services may include home modifications, as identified by the member's case manager and listed on their plan of care.
  • Annuities and trusts. Indiana requires annuities to be disclosed on a Medicaid application, with the state named as a remainder beneficiary. Moving assets into an annuity or trust for less than fair value can also run into the 60-month look-back, which makes these easy to get wrong. Talk to an elder-law attorney first.
  • A written funding plan. Combining sources in the right order is the whole game. Our guide to building a senior care funding plan walks through how to sequence them.

Learn More

FinancialIndiana Senior Property Tax ReliefIndiana's 2025 law converted the old Over-65 Deduction to a credit. Here's who qualifies, what each credit pays, and how to apply by January 15. FinancialIndiana Retirement Income TaxNo, Indiana doesn't tax Social Security, and military retirement is fully deductible. See the 2026 state rate and which deductions reach other income. FinancialHow to Pay for Senior CareHow to pay for senior care: what it costs nationally and how Medicaid, Medicare, VA benefits, and private pay each fit. Who qualifies, what's covered, in 2026. FinancialHow to Pay for Assisted LivingHow to pay for assisted living in 2026: what it costs and how private pay, Medicaid waivers, VA Aid and Attendance, and long-term care insurance each fit. FinancialHow to Pay for Nursing Home CareHow to pay for nursing home care in 2026: what it costs and how Medicaid, Medicare, VA benefits, long-term care insurance, and private pay each fit in. FinancialHow to Pay for In-Home CareHow to pay for in-home care in 2026: what it costs and how Medicare, Medicaid HCBS waivers, VA benefits, and long-term care insurance each help cover it. Care TypesCost of Senior Care in IndianaWhat senior care costs in Indiana in 2026: in-home care runs about $35 an hour, and Indiana sits below national medians for assisted living and nursing care. MedicaidIndiana Medicaid Income LimitsIndiana's 2026 Medicaid income cap for nursing-home care is $2,982/month and the asset limit is $2,000. Over the cap? You need a Miller Trust. Here's how. MedicaidHow to Apply for Indiana MedicaidApply for Indiana Medicaid online, in person at a local DFR office, by mail, or by phone, plus Miller Trust rules, documents, timelines, and appeals. MedicaidIndiana Medicaid Estate RecoveryIndiana Medicaid estate recovery can claim what Medicaid paid after age 55. Learn who's protected, what assets are at risk, and how to respond to an FSSA claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Medicare pay for assisted living or a nursing home in Indiana?

No. Medicare does not pay for long-term care, the help with daily activities that people get in assisted living, adult day health care, or a nursing home. It only pays for limited skilled care: up to 100 days in a skilled nursing facility per benefit period after a qualifying hospital stay, plus hospice and some home health care for people who meet those benefits' rules., A missed three-day qualifying stay is not automatically the end of the road: an ACO or Medicare Advantage waiver, re-entry to a SNF within 30 days, an appeal of an inpatient-to-observation status change (the fast-appeal track is open for admissions on or after February 14, 2025, while the retrospective track's filing window closed January 2, 2026 and a later request now needs good cause), or another payer such as Medicaid or VA benefits can each still open it. For ongoing care, families rely on Medicaid, VA benefits, long-term care insurance, or private pay.

How does Indiana Medicaid help pay for senior care?

Indiana Medicaid pays for long-term care through nursing-facility coverage and home-and-community-based waivers, now delivered for Hoosiers aged 60 and older through Indiana PathWays for Aging. It covers nursing home care, and waiver services may include assisted living and help at home. In 2026 an applicant can have income up to $2,982 a month, counting only the applicant's own income, and a single applicant no more than $2,000 in countable assets. People over the income cap can still qualify with a valid Qualified Income Trust.

How much does senior care cost in Indiana?

Indiana runs below the national medians for assisted living and both kinds of nursing home room. In CareScout's 2025 survey, released in March 2026, the Indiana median is about $294 a day ($107,310 a year) for a semi-private nursing home room, about $10,326 a month ($123,918 a year) for a private room, and about $5,639 a month ($67,665 a year) for assisted living, against national medians of about $315 a day, $129,575 a year, and $6,200 a month. In-home care in Indiana runs about $35 an hour for a non-medical caregiver, exactly the national median. Adult day health care is the exception, at about $127 a day against a national median of about $95. Because rates are collected by metropolitan area, costs vary within Indiana.

Can VA benefits pay for senior care in Indiana?

Yes. A veteran who qualifies for the VA pension, which requires wartime service among other tests, and who needs another person's help with daily activities may qualify for VA Aid and Attendance. It carries a higher maximum annual pension rate than the basic pension, and surviving spouses have their own Aid and Attendance rates. For the rate year that began December 1, 2025, the maximum annual rate is $29,093 for a veteran with no dependents, $34,488 with one dependent, and $18,697 for a surviving spouse with no dependents. Those maximums are ceilings rather than payments: VA pays the difference between the limit and the claimant's countable income, divided by 12 and paid monthly, so a veteran with other income receives less than the figures above.

Find personalized help paying for senior care in Indiana at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.

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