Getting Covered in Texas
Medicaid, CHIP, the Marketplace, Medicare, and the gap between them.
- Coverage If You Lose Your Job in Texas: COBRA Against a Marketplace Plan
July 17, 2026
Losing job-based coverage opens two doors at once: COBRA and a Marketplace special enrollment period. How Texans work out the arithmetic between them.
- Medicare Basics for Texans: Turning 65 Without Coverage
July 9, 2026
Turning 65 uninsured in Texas: Parts A to D, the enrollment windows that carry lifetime penalties, and where the Medicare Savings Programs are decided.
- Short Term Plans and Health Shares: What Texas Regulators Say They Are Not
July 2, 2026
TDI's warning in plain terms: short-term plans, discount cards, and health care sharing ministries are not coverage, and often not regulated at all.
- Cost Sharing Reductions: The Silver Plan Rule and Why Bronze Can Cost More
June 25, 2026
Cost sharing reductions only attach to Silver plans, which is why a cheaper Bronze premium can leave a Texas household worse off across a whole year.
- Picking a Marketplace Plan in Texas: Deductible, Network, Formulary, Traps
June 16, 2026
Deductible against premium, network checks, drug formularies: the plan comparison steps that decide what a Texas Marketplace policy really costs you.
- Special Enrollment Periods: Getting Covered Outside Texas Open Enrollment
June 10, 2026
Missed open enrollment? A qualifying life event can still open the Marketplace. What triggers one in Texas, the proof requested, and where the deadlines sit.
- How Marketplace Subsidies Work: The FPL Band, the Benchmark Plan, and Tax Time
May 29, 2026
Premium tax credits run from 100% to 400% FPL again for 2026. The benchmark plan, the FPL band, and the reconciliation that catches people at tax time.
- Marketplace Plans in Texas: What Is Sold Here and How to Read It
May 22, 2026
What is actually sold on the Texas Marketplace: metal tiers, narrow networks, and how to read a plan you have no way to test drive before you buy it.
- CHIP and Children's Medicaid in Texas: The Age Bands That Decide Which One
May 12, 2026
Children's Medicaid runs to 198% FPL for infants and CHIP to 201%. How HHSC's age bands decide which of the two programs a Texas household lands in.
- Medicaid for Pregnant Women in Texas: The Limit, the Coverage, the 12 Months
May 11, 2026
Medicaid for Pregnant Women reaches 198% FPL on HHSC's chart, and coverage runs 12 months after the birth. What the pathway covers and how to apply.
- Texas Medicaid Eligibility: The Categories That Exist, and the Ones That Do Not
May 5, 2026
Category first, income second: how Texas Medicaid eligibility really works, the limits HHSC publishes, and the adult pathway this state never created.
- Why Texas Did Not Expand Medicaid: The History, and What Expansion Would Change
April 21, 2026
Ten states have not adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion and Texas is one. The policy history without a side, and what expansion would actually change here.
- The Texas Coverage Gap: Why Reapplying With the Same Income Changes Nothing
April 15, 2026
Too much for Medicaid, too little for a subsidy: about 605,000 Texans sit in the coverage gap, and reapplying next year with the same income changes nothing.
- Health Coverage in Texas: Every Route In, and Who Falls Between Them
April 13, 2026
Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country at 16.7%. Every route to coverage here, who each one is for, and who none of them reach.