What Is the Florida Long-Term Care Partnership Program?

The Florida Long-Term Care Partnership Program is a Medicaid rule that rewards people who bought qualifying long-term care insurance: for every $1 the policy pays in benefits, Florida disregards $1 of your countable assets if you later apply for Medicaid long-term care. Against a countable asset limit of $2,000 for a single applicant in 2026, the Florida Department of Financial Services gives the plain example: a partnership policy that paid $100,000 lets the applicant keep up to $102,000 (Florida DFS).

It is not a separate product, a government policy or a subsidy. It is a label that attaches to certain private long-term care policies, and it only ever matters in one scenario: the policy has paid out, care is still needed, and the household is now looking at Medicaid. In that scenario it can be the difference between a surviving nest egg and a spend-down to almost nothing.

This post covers where the program comes from, which policies qualify, exactly how Florida applies the disregard, what it does not do, and how to find out whether a policy you already own carries it. It is education on the published rules, not legal or Medicaid-planning advice for your situation.

Where does the Florida partnership program come from?

Two facts create the problem the program solves. About 70% of people turning 65 will need some type of long-term care during their lives (ACL.gov), and Medicare does not pay for custodial care when that is the only care you need (Medicare.gov). Medicaid does pay, but only after a household has spent its countable assets down to the program’s limits.

Congress opened a middle path in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which allowed every state to set up a “qualified State long-term care insurance partnership” (42 U.S.C. §1396p(b)(1)(C)). The bargain is simple. If you insure part of the risk privately, the state relaxes its asset test by the amount your insurance paid, and the Medicaid program is spared the cost of the care your policy covered.

Florida took the offer. Section 409.9102, Florida Statutes directs the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), working with the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) and the Department of Children and Families (DCF), to run the program. The statute lists its purposes: give people an incentive to obtain long-term care insurance, provide a way to qualify for Medicaid long-term care “without first being required to substantially exhaust his or her assets,” and relieve pressure on the state’s medical assistance budget.

Three agencies, three jobs. AHCA oversees the program. OIR approves which policy forms may be sold as partnership policies. DCF, the agency that decides Medicaid financial eligibility in Florida, applies the disregard when someone applies.

How does the dollar-for-dollar asset disregard work?

The statute tells DCF to “reduce the total countable assets of the individual by an amount equal to the insurance benefit payments that are made to or on behalf of the individual.” DCF’s own eligibility manual turns that into working instructions, and it is worth reading because it answers questions the brochures skip (ESS Policy Manual, passage 1640.0594):

• Where it applies. The disregard applies to the Institutional Care Program (nursing facility Medicaid), Home and Community Based Services, Hospice, and the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly. It is not limited to nursing homes.
• What is disregarded. An amount “equal to the actual amount of LTC insurance partnership benefits paid out to or on behalf of the individual.”
• How long it lasts. “The resource disregard will continue to apply for the duration of the individual’s Medicaid coverage.”
• What happens at death. “The resource disregard is protected from estate recovery.”

The manual’s example: an applicant has $61,000 in countable resources, and his partnership policy paid $60,000 toward his nursing home bill. DCF reduces his countable resources by $60,000, leaving $1,000 to be measured against the limit. He qualifies on assets without spending the $60,000.

One detail deserves emphasis. The protection is earned by benefits paid, not by the size of the policy you bought. A policy with a $300,000 benefit pool that has paid $120,000 by the time you apply protects $120,000. The manual also anticipates someone applying while the policy is still paying, and tells staff how to treat the continuing insurance payments, so the protected amount can keep growing as more benefits are paid.

A worked comparison for a Clearwater widow

The household numbers below are invented for illustration. The Medicaid limit is the real 2026 figure: $2,000 in countable resources for a single applicant (CMS 2026 standards).

Assume a widow with $180,000 in countable savings needs care for several years. In two of the three versions of her story she owns a long-term care policy that pays $150,000 before it is exhausted. Care continues, and she applies for Florida Medicaid.

Both policies paid the same $150,000 toward the same care, and both delayed the day she needed Medicaid by the same amount. The non-partnership policy protected her savings only while it was paying. The partnership policy kept protecting them afterward. That is the entire value of the designation. It is not a rider you add at the end: it comes from how the policy was built and filed, which is the next section.

Which long-term care policies qualify as partnership policies?

OIR’s rule 69O-157.201, which mirrors the federal definition, sets the conditions. An insurer may market a policy as an approved Florida partnership policy only if:

1. The form and rates were filed with and approved by OIR as a partnership policy.
2. The policy is tax-qualified, meaning a qualified long-term care insurance contract under section 7702B(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. That is the same test that controls whether premiums can count toward the medical expense deduction, covered in our post on whether long-term care insurance is tax deductible.
3. You were a resident of Florida, or of a state with a reciprocal agreement, when the coverage first became effective.
4. The coverage became effective on or after January 1, 2007.
5. It includes inflation protection that matches your age at purchase.

The inflation requirement is the one that actually shapes the policy. It comes straight from the federal statute:

The logic is sound. A 55-year-old is buying a benefit she may not use for 25 or 30 years, and a daily benefit that looks adequate today will not be adequate then unless it grows. The state does not want to extend Medicaid asset protection on the strength of a policy that inflation hollowed out. To see what that erosion looks like in dollars, put your own figures into our long-term care cost estimator, which projects the cost of care forward to the year you are likely to need it.

The rule also reaches backward. Insurers were required to notify people holding long-term care coverage issued on or after March 1, 2003 about the partnership program and offer them the option to exchange into a partnership policy, with the partnership status effective from the exchange date. If you bought a policy between 2003 and 2007 and never heard about this, it is a fair question to put to the carrier.

What about hybrid life and long-term care policies?

Do not assume. Partnership status belongs to a specific policy form that a carrier filed and OIR approved as a partnership policy, and the form has to be a tax-qualified long-term care contract with the required inflation protection. A life insurance policy with a long-term care rider, or an annuity with a care multiplier, is a different kind of contract, and whether any given one carries partnership status is a question only the carrier’s paperwork can answer. If Medicaid asset protection matters to your plan, ask for the partnership disclosure notice before you buy, whatever the product is called. Our guide to how to pay for long-term care compares how traditional, hybrid and asset-based designs are built.

What does the partnership program not do?

AHCA puts the most important limit in a single sentence: “Purchase of a partnership policy does not guarantee eligibility for Medicaid” (AHCA). The program adjusts one test. Everything else about Florida long-term care Medicaid still applies:

• The income test. For 2026 the gross monthly income cap for a single applicant is $2,982, three times the $994 SSI federal benefit rate (CMS). Income above the cap has to be routed through a qualified income trust. The partnership disregard applies to assets, not income.
• Patient responsibility. Once on Medicaid in a facility, nearly all of the resident’s monthly income still goes toward the cost of care. Protected assets stay protected; monthly income does not.
• The medical test. You must meet Florida’s level-of-care standard regardless of what insurance you owned.
• The look-back. Gifts and below-market transfers made in the 60 months before applying can still trigger a penalty period. A partnership policy protects assets you kept, not assets you gave away.
• Where care is delivered. Medicaid pays providers that accept Medicaid. The disregard protects money, not choice of facility.

Our post on whether Medicaid pays for nursing home care in Florida sets out each of those tests with the 2026 figures, including the separate protections for a spouse who stays at home, which exist with or without a partnership policy.

Two more limits are less obvious. First, a policy that never pays protects nothing, because the disregard is measured by benefits paid. Second, the program is only useful to a household that might plausibly reach Medicaid. A couple with assets large enough to pay for years of care out of pocket will likely never apply, and for them the partnership label is harmless but irrelevant. A household with very little to protect has the opposite issue: the premium may be a poor trade for the assets at stake. The program was designed for the broad middle, people with real savings that several years of care could erase.

What happens if you change the policy or move out of Florida?

Partnership status is not permanent by default. The disclosure notice Florida requires insurers to deliver must warn that status “may be lost if the insured moves to a different state or modifies the coverage after issue, or if changes in federal or state laws occur” (rule 69O-157.201).

Changing coverage. The most common way people put status at risk is by reducing or dropping inflation protection to soften a premium increase. For someone who bought before age 61, compound inflation protection is a condition of partnership status, not an optional extra. Florida’s rule gives you a safeguard here: when an insurer learns that a policyholder is taking an action that will cost the policy its partnership status, it must explain the impact in writing, and must advise how to retain the status if that is possible. Read that letter before you sign a change form.

Moving. The insurance travels with you; the Medicaid disregard may not. The Department of Financial Services notes that not all states participate in the partnership program and not all states recognize policies purchased elsewhere, and recommends checking with the destination state’s Medicaid eligibility agency before a move. In the other direction, the news for Tampa Bay’s many transplants is good: “Florida does honor LTCPP insurance policies purchased in reciprocal states” (Florida DFS). If you bought a partnership policy in another state before retiring to St. Petersburg or Sarasota, ask the carrier to confirm in writing that the issuing state is reciprocal with Florida.

How do you find out whether your policy is a partnership policy?

Work through it in this order:

1. Check the effective date. Coverage effective before January 1, 2007 is not a Florida partnership policy unless it was exchanged for one later.
2. Look for the Partnership Status Disclosure Notice. Florida requires the insurer to deliver it, on company letterhead, at or before policy delivery. It is usually filed with the policy schedule.
3. Ask the carrier in writing. Ask two questions: is this an approved partnership policy, and has any change I made since issue affected that status?
4. Keep the paper trail. When a partnership policyholder applies for Medicaid, DCF staff are instructed to verify both that the policy is a qualified partnership policy and the total benefits paid, using OIR’s form or the insurer’s equivalent. “Not all long-term care insurance policies are a qualified LTC Insurance Partnership Policy,” the manual reminds its own caseworkers. The family that can produce the notice and the claims history saves itself weeks.
5. Use the state’s help lines. The Florida Insurance Consumer Helpline is 1-877-693-5236. DCF, which decides Medicaid eligibility, is at 1-866-762-2237. SHINE, Florida’s volunteer counseling program for elders, can also talk through long-term care insurance questions at no charge.

Where does this fit in a long-term care plan?

Think of the partnership feature as a second layer under the policy itself. The policy’s first job is to pay for care, on your terms, in the setting you choose, for as long as the benefit pool lasts. For most claims that is the whole story. The partnership layer only comes into play in the long-tail case: dementia care that runs for many years, or two spouses needing care in succession. That is exactly the case people fear most, and it is the case where a modest policy with partnership status can protect more than its face value suggests, because every dollar it pays is also a dollar of savings the household gets to keep.

It also changes how much coverage is “enough.” Without the partnership rule, a policy smaller than the worst case leaves the household exposed once it runs out. With it, a policy sized to the assets you want to protect does a coherent job even if care outlasts it. That is a sizing conversation, and it depends on your savings, your health and what you want left for a spouse or heirs. It is also a timing conversation, because every one of these policies is medically underwritten; our guide on when to plan for long-term care explains why the window narrows with health rather than age.

If you would like to look at whether a partnership-qualified policy belongs in your plan, or to work out whether the policy already in your filing cabinet is one, schedule a conversation with Virginia. As a Certified in Long-Term Care advisor she will walk through the policy language and the Florida rules with you, tell you plainly if the partnership feature is unlikely to matter for a household like yours, and point you to an elder law attorney for the Medicaid questions that belong with one. Availability and underwriting vary by carrier and by state, and there is nothing to buy on a first call.