Mississippi Medicaid Look-Back Calculator

Mississippi's look-back and penalty divisor

Mississippi divides counted transfers by $9,430 per month (Mississippi Division of Medicaid Eligibility Manual Appendix A-2-i, Chart of Institutional Limits and Transfer of Assets Divisors (rev. 07/01/2026), effective July 1, 2025) and looks back 60 months.

• An application for home and community-based services cannot start the penalty clock. (MS Medicaid Eligibility Policy Manual 306.05.03 (eff. Nov 2014; Wayback copy 2025-11-18))
• For new applications, the divisor used is the one in effect at the time of application. (MS Medicaid Eligibility Policy Manual 306.05.03 (eff. Nov 2014; Wayback copy 2025-11-18))
• Whole months use the monthly rate, and the leftover dollars are divided by the daily rate, with the fraction of a day dropped in the manual example. (MS Medicaid Eligibility Policy Manual 306.05.03 (eff. Nov 2014; Wayback copy 2025-11-18))
• A waiver applicant whose Medicaid depends on the waiver is denied until the transfer falls outside the five-year look-back, rather than serving a penalty. (MS Medicaid Eligibility Policy Manual 306.05.03 (eff. Nov 2014; Wayback copy 2025-11-18))

Less certain: The Mississippi documents were read from web archive copies because the agency site did not respond.

How the look-back and the penalty work

When someone applies for Medicaid to pay for nursing-home care, the state looks back at gifts and transfers made for less than fair value. Federal law sets the look-back at 60 months before the application for transfers made since February 8, 2006, and California runs its own 30-month rule.

Every counted transfer in the window is added together and divided by the state's penalty divisor, the average monthly cost of private-pay nursing-facility care that the state publishes. The result is the number of months Medicaid will not pay for long-term care. Federal law says a state may not round a partial month down, and states handle the leftover fraction in different ways: as part of a month, as whole days, or as a one-time dollar charge. California, which runs its own rules, does not impose a partial month.

The penalty does not start on the date of the gift. It starts only when the person has applied, would otherwise be eligible, and is receiving long-term care, which is why a gift made years earlier can still delay coverage at the worst moment. California is the exception: under DHCS guidance a Medi-Cal period of ineligibility runs from the month of the transfer.

Transfers federal law does not penalize

Some transfers are exempt under 42 U.S.C. 1396p(c)(2): anything to a spouse or for the spouse's sole benefit; transfers to a blind or disabled child or a trust solely for that child's benefit; a trust solely for a disabled person under 65; and the home, when it goes to a spouse, a child under 21, a blind or disabled child, a sibling with an equity interest who lived there for a year, or a child who lived there for two years and provided care that kept the parent at home.

A penalty can also be avoided if the state accepts that the transfer was for fair value or made only for a reason other than qualifying for Medicaid, if all transferred assets are returned, or if the state grants an undue hardship waiver.