Does Medicare pay for board and care or assisted living?

No. Medicare does not pay for long-term custodial care, including board and care and assisted living. It covers up to 100 days in a skilled nursing facility after a qualifying hospital stay, which is time-limited medical care and not a place to live.

Does the Medi-Cal Assisted Living Waiver pay for room and board?

No. The Assisted Living Waiver pays the facility for care ($95.69 to $270.80 per day by tier), but not for room and board. The resident pays room and board, usually out of SSI — $1,444.07 per month to the facility, keeping $182 for personal needs.

How much does a 6-bed board and care home cost in Orange County?

No government body or survey publishes a median price for a six-bed board and care home in California. Rates are set privately by each home. Figures quoted elsewhere are estimates with no published methodology. NestScout calls the home and asks.

Home › What care costs

What care actually costs in Orange County, 2026

Every number on this page is a published government figure or a named survey, with a source and a date. We do not make prices up.

The most important thing on this page is the thing nobody knows

No government body and no survey publishes a median price for a six-bed board & care home in California. Not CDSS, which licenses them. Not CareScout, which blends them into one "assisted living" number. Rates are set privately by each home and negotiated at the kitchen table.

So every site telling you "board and care runs about $4,000 a month" is guessing, and none of them will show you their method. We do the only honest thing available instead: we call the home and ask. Ring (949) 440-1669 and we will tell you what the specific home you are asking about actually charges.

If your mother has Medi-Cal — the Assisted Living Waiver

Orange County is one of 15 California counties in the Assisted Living Waiver (ALW). Medi-Cal pays the home for care — between $95.69 and $270.80 per day, depending on how much help she needs.

But the waiver does not pay for room and board. This is the part that blindsides families. She pays that herself, and almost everyone pays it out of SSI: $1,444.07/month goes to the home, and she keeps $182 for personal needs.

⚠️ The ALW has a waitlist of 6,287 people. It is not something you sign up for and receive.

See the 197 Orange County homes that accept Medi-Cal →

If she is on SSI

The California SSI/SSP standard for someone in a licensed non-medical care home is $1,626.07/month (effective 1 January 2026). Of that, $1,444.07 goes to the home and she keeps $182.

A home that accepts SSI must accept that as payment in full. It is not allowed to ask the family to top it up. If a home asks you to pay a supplement on top of SSI, call us.

If the family is paying privately

The CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey puts the median for a large assisted living community in California at $7,000/month for a private one-bedroom. That figure is statewide, not Orange County, and it is for the large communities. Small six-bed homes are typically far cheaper — but, as above, nobody publishes that number, so we will not pretend to either.

What does Medicare pay? Nothing.

Medicare does not pay for board and care, and it does not pay for assisted living. This is the single most common misunderstanding families arrive with.

Medicare does cover up to 100 days in a skilled nursing facility after a qualifying hospital stay — but that is time-limited medical care, not a place to live. (From day 21 to day 100 she pays $217 a day herself.) Skilled nursing and assisted living are different things, and conflating them is how families end up with a bill they did not expect.

Sources

Verified 2026-07-13. If a figure here goes out of date, tell us and we will fix it.

Tell us what you need. We'll find the room.

Free for families. We already know which homes have an opening — because we call them.