Alaska Medicaid Income Limits 2026: Eligibility & Assets

There is no single Alaska Medicaid income limit. There are two, and which one applies to you turns on why you need coverage. If you are asking about nursing-home or waiver care, the 2026 limit is $2,982 a month for a single applicant, and Alaska is an income-cap state, so a dollar over that line bars you unless you route the excess through a Miller Trust.1 If you are asking about regular Medicaid (the coverage most people under 65 apply for), the test is a percentage of the federal poverty level, there is no asset limit at all, and Alaska covers expansion adults up to 138% FPL effective.2,3

This guide covers both. On the long-term-care side: the $2,000 asset limit, the $2,982 income cap and the Miller Trust that catches anyone over it, what a nursing-home resident keeps, and what a spouse at home is protected from.1 On the regular (MAGI) side: Alaska's 2026 limits for adults, parents and caretaker relatives, pregnant women, and children under Denali KidCare, plus what happens to that coverage on your 65th birthday.2

Which Alaska Medicaid income limit applies to you?

Almost every argument about Medicaid income limits is really two people talking about two different tests.

The SSI-related (aged, blind, and disabled) test is the one this guide leads with. It governs nursing-facility care, home-and-community-based waivers, and coverage for people 65 and older. It uses the SSI program's income rules, and it carries a hard asset limit.3 In Alaska that means the $2,982/month income cap and the $2,000 asset limit.1

The MAGI test (modified adjusted gross income) governs everyone else: adults under 65 who are not disabled, parents and caretaker relatives, pregnant women, and children. It is a percentage-of-poverty test, and federal law bars any asset test on these groups.3 Those figures are in the MAGI section below.

The dividing line is not income. It is age, disability, and Medicare, which is why turning 65 can move a person from one test to the other overnight, without a dollar of their income changing. That transition is covered below.

The $2,000 asset limit

Alaska holds to the traditional federal asset standard. A single applicant for nursing-facility or waiver Medicaid is limited to $2,000 in countable assets; a married couple with both spouses applying is limited to $3,000.1 That figure has been unchanged at the federal level since the 1980s, and unlike a handful of states that have raised their own ceiling, Alaska has not.

Only countable assets are tested. Alaska, like every state, exempts a long list from the count: your home (subject to an equity cap), one vehicle, household goods and personal effects, and prepaid burial arrangements. So the $2,000 limit applies to things like bank accounts, a second vehicle, and investments, not the roof over your head.1

The 2026 home-equity limit for an exempt primary residence is $752,000. Equity above that line becomes countable for long-term-care eligibility, unless a spouse or a minor, blind, or disabled child lives in the home.1

The Alaska Medicaid income limits and the Miller Trust

For nursing-facility care and home-and-community-based waiver services, Alaska sets the 2026 income limit at $2,982 per month, equal to 300% of the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Federal Benefit Rate of $994.1,4

Here is where Alaska parts ways with spend-down states like Illinois. Alaska is an income-cap state: there is no "spend the excess on medical bills" path. An applicant whose gross monthly income is above $2,982, even by a dollar, is over the cap and cannot qualify for long-term-care Medicaid on income alone.1

The fix is a Qualified Income Trust (QIT), commonly called a Miller Trust. It's an irrevocable trust that the applicant's excess income flows into each month. Money in the trust no longer counts against the $2,982 income cap, and it's spent down under tight rules (toward the patient's care, the spousal allowance, and certain medical costs), with the state named as remainder beneficiary on the applicant's death.1 An applicant who is over the cap by any amount uses the trust the same way: the whole income stream typically routes through it each month, the income test is satisfied, and the trust pays the care contribution while the resident keeps their Personal Needs Allowance.

The trust has to be set up correctly to do its job, so an elder-law attorney is worth the cost here. A trust drafted wrong, or funded in the wrong month, can blow the eligibility it was meant to secure. For the broader toolkit, see our guide to Medicaid planning strategies.

What a nursing-home resident keeps: the Personal Needs Allowance

When Alaska Medicaid pays for nursing-facility care, the resident contributes almost all of their monthly income toward the cost of care. What they keep is the Personal Needs Allowance (PNA), money reserved for the resident's own small expenses (clothing, a haircut, a phone). Under Alaska regulation 7 AAC 100.558, the PNA for a recipient in a long-term-care facility is $75/month, or $90/month for a qualifying veteran with no spouse or dependent who receives VA aid.1,5

The amount is higher for people who receive waiver services outside a nursing home: a recipient living at home on a Medicaid waiver keeps $1,656/month, and one in an assisted-living home on a waiver keeps $1,396/month, because they still pay their own room, board, and living costs.1 (For the national picture on how the PNA is calculated, see our explainer on the Medicaid personal needs allowance.)

The same $2,000 asset limit applies to nursing-home applicants. And because Alaska is an income-cap state, a resident with income over $2,982 still needs the Miller Trust described above, even after they're contributing nearly all of it toward care.1

The five-year look-back

Alaska reviews asset transfers made in the 60 months before a long-term-care application.1,6 Giving away money or property for less than fair market value during that window (gifting a grandchild a down payment, signing a house over to a child for a dollar) can trigger a penalty period during which Medicaid won't pay for long-term-care services, even though you're otherwise eligible.

There are legitimate exceptions (transfers between spouses, transfers to a disabled child, certain caregiver-child home transfers) and legitimate planning approaches, but anything done inside the five-year window deserves an elder-law attorney's review first. If long-term care is on the horizon for someone in your family, talk to a professional before moving assets.

Protecting the spouse who stays home

When one spouse needs long-term care and the other remains in the community, federal spousal-impoverishment rules keep the at-home spouse from being left destitute. Alaska applies the federal figures for 2026:1

So a married couple is in a very different position from a single applicant. The community spouse can hold up to half the couple's countable assets, capped at $162,660, and keep a monthly income allowance in the federal range while the other spouse receives Medicaid-funded care.1

The MAGI income limits: Alaska Medicaid for under-65 adults and families

Everything above is the long-term-care track. This is the other one: the test that decides regular Medicaid for adults under 65, parents and caretaker relatives, pregnant women, and children.

Alaska has adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion, and its Division of Public Assistance publishes a standing "Expansion Group" income standard alongside standards for the other MAGI groups.2 Nationally, 41 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted the expansion and ten have not.7

One wrinkle before the chart. The percentages a state publishes are base levels, and Alaska applies a separate 5%-of-FPL income disregard on top of each one, so the effective ceiling runs five percentage points higher than the published base. The expansion group's 133% base is 138% effective; children's 203% base is roughly 208% effective.2 The national eligibility table CMS publishes on medicaid.gov lists Alaska's base levels (133% and 203%), which is why both sets of numbers circulate. They are not in conflict. They are the same standard before and after the disregard.2

The FPL-based standards above took effect 4/1/2026.2 The medicaid.gov national table shows no separate CHIP program for Alaska; children's coverage runs through Denali KidCare rather than a standalone plan.2 Federal law makes children's coverage mandatory to at least 133% FPL, so Alaska's 203% sits well above the federal floor.8

One Alaska-specific trap: because Alaska runs on higher federal poverty guidelines than the contiguous 48 states, the dollar amounts behind these percentages are higher than the figures on any national chart.2,9 Get the current dollar standard for your household size from DPA rather than converting a national chart yourself.

Parents and caretaker relatives: the group with its own rulebook

After the 65-and-over track, this is the group that matters most to our readers, because it is the one a grandparent raising a grandchild would look to. It is also the group whose rules make the least intuitive sense.

Parents and caretaker relatives are a federally mandatory Medicaid group, but they are not covered to a percentage of poverty the way children (mandatory to 133% FPL) and expansion adults (138% effective) are. Federal regulation sets their minimum at the state's old cash-welfare standard: the AFDC income standard the state had in effect on May 1, 1988, converted to a MAGI equivalent. The underlying statute ties the group to the state's pre-welfare-reform AFDC criteria as they stood on July 16, 1996.10 That peg to a decades-old welfare number, never re-indexed to the poverty level, is why a working parent in a state that never adopted the expansion can be over the Medicaid income limit at a strikingly low income.10

That AFDC figure is a federal floor, not a ceiling, and Alaska sits above it. Alaska sets this group at a published dollar standard of $1,854/month for a household of one, effective January 1, 2026, which the medicaid.gov table marks at roughly 130% FPL, flagged as a dollar standard rather than a live percentage.2 So an Alaskan in this group is measured against a dollar figure, not a percentage that moves with the poverty guidelines.

Two cautions if you are a grandparent raising a grandchild. First, whether you meet the definition of a caretaker relative is a determination the Division of Public Assistance makes. It is not something you can read off a chart, so ask them before you assume either way. Second, MAGI household size follows your federal income-tax household, not who sleeps under your roof: under federal regulation the household is generally the taxpayer plus their spouse and tax dependents, and CMS treats a Medicaid household as generally the same as a tax household.11 Whether you claim a grandchild as a dependent can therefore change both your household size and whose income counts. These MAGI household rules also differ from the ones used on the aged, blind, and disabled side, so the same family can be counted two different ways depending on which pathway applies.11

No asset test on the MAGI side

This is the sharpest contrast on this page. The $2,000 asset limit at the top of this guide is a long-term-care rule, and it does not apply to the MAGI groups at all. Federal law bars a state from applying any asset or resource test to expansion adults, children, pregnant women, or parents and caretaker relatives.3 A 50-year-old Alaskan applying for regular Medicaid is not asked what is in their savings account. The statute expressly excepts the SSI-related aged, blind, and disabled and long-term-care pathways from that rule, which is exactly why the $2,000 limit reappears for a nursing-home applicant.3

The 65th birthday: when the MAGI pathway closes

Because Alaska adopted the expansion, this transition lands here in full force.

The ACA new adult group is written narrowly. It covers individuals under 65 years of age, not pregnant, not entitled to or enrolled in Medicare, with income at or below 133% FPL (138% effective once the 5-percentage-point MAGI disregard is applied), and, being a MAGI group, it applies no asset test.12,3

Read those conditions again. On the 65th birthday, that pathway closes. The same person, with the same income, is generally assessed on the SSI-related ABD track instead, the track the statute expressly excepts from the no-asset-test rule.3 Two things change at once:

• The income yardstick changes. Instead of 138% FPL, the reference becomes the SSI Federal Benefit Rate, $994/month for an individual in 2026.12,4
• An asset test appears. A resource test that federal law had barred for the MAGI groups now applies, defaulting to the SSI standard of $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple.4,3 Alaska applies that $2,000 standard to a single long-term-care applicant.1

So an Alaskan covered under the expansion group at 64, with no asset test and a ceiling of 138% FPL, can turn 65 and be over both tests at once, holding modest savings, without a dollar of income changing.12 Nothing about their circumstances moved. The rulebook did.

For a sense of scale: in the 48 contiguous states and DC, 138% of the $15,960 one-person poverty guideline works out to roughly $1,835/month.9,12 That is not Alaska's number. Alaska and Hawaii run on separate, higher poverty guidelines, so Alaska's dollar equivalent is higher.9,2 Ask DPA for the current Alaska figure rather than lifting one off a national chart.

Age is not the only trigger. The new adult group also excludes anyone entitled to or enrolled in Medicare, so someone under 65 who reaches Medicare through a disability leaves the 138%/no-asset-test group the same way.12

If this is your situation, don't assume the answer is no. The ABD track is where the rest of this guide's machinery comes into play (the Miller Trust for income over the cap, the spousal-impoverishment protections), and it exists precisely because people land on it with income above $994.1

Will the state recover from the estate after death?

Like every state, Alaska runs a Medicaid estate-recovery program. After a recipient who was 55 or older and received long-term-care services dies, the state may seek repayment from the estate, unless the recipient is survived by a spouse or a minor, blind, or disabled child. Federal exceptions apply, and an undue-hardship waiver exists.1,13 For how estate recovery works and where families have room to plan, see our Medicaid estate recovery explainer.

How to apply in Alaska

Alaska Medicaid is administered by the Alaska Department of Health, Alaska Division of Public Assistance (DPA), and eligibility is processed through the state's ARIES system.1 You can apply online through the ARIES self-service portal, which handles Medicaid and other public-assistance programs together, or by phone through the DPA Virtual Contact Center. Use the contacts below to start.

Long-term-care applicants also go through a level-of-care screening to confirm they need nursing-facility-level services. Apply even if you think you're over the income cap. Between a properly drafted Miller Trust and the spousal-impoverishment protections, many people who assume they're disqualified are not.

Learn More

Find personalized help working through Alaska Medicaid eligibility and the Miller Trust question for your family 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.