Breast and Cervical Cancer Services in Texas: Screening, Diagnosis, Medicaid

Breast and Cervical Cancer Services is the Texas program for breast and cervical screening and diagnostic services, and HHSC runs it under the Healthy Texas Women umbrella rather than as a program with its own agency¹ (checked 30 July 2026). It belongs to the small group of Texas programs where a diagnosis, not an income figure, is what opens the door.

I sit with women at YourTexasBenefits for a living, and the case that taught me this subject was not an eligibility case at all. A woman came in with a referral slip for a mammogram, folded into quarters, that she had been carrying for five months. She was not confused about whether she needed it. She had called the imaging center, been quoted a self pay price she could not raise, and put the slip in her bag. Nobody had told her that the state runs a screening program, that a health center down the road prices on a sliding scale, or that the referral did not expire the way she assumed. The barrier was never medical. It was that no single person had ever said the three sentences she needed in one sitting.

Nothing here is an eligibility determination, and nothing here is clinical advice. Whether and when to be screened is a conversation with a clinician, not with a website; this page is about how a screening or a diagnostic follow up gets paid for and where to go when there is no coverage behind it.

What is the Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program?

It is the state’s screening and diagnostic program for breast and cervical cancer, administered by HHSC and presented to the public through Healthy Texas Women¹² (both checked 30 July 2026). In practice that means the program contracts with providers who deliver screening and the diagnostic work that follows an abnormal result, rather than issuing an insurance card that any clinic will take.

The reason a state program exists at all is the size of the uncovered population it is aimed at. In 2024 Texas recorded 21.6% of adults aged 19 to 64 uninsured, the highest rate in the country, against a statewide rate of 16.7% and a national 8.2%³ (2024 data, checked 30 July 2026). For a working age woman with no employer plan, no dependent children at home, and an income under the Marketplace subsidy floor, there is no adult Medicaid category in Texas to fall back on. Screening programs are one of the few state answers to that.

Where this sits against the rest of the state list is in Texas health programs, and the wider map of who covers whom is health coverage in Texas.

What this page does not publish about BCCS eligibility, and who holds it

This site publishes no BCCS income limit, no age range, no screening interval, and no program code, because none of them has been read off an HHSC or Healthy Texas Women source and stamped with a date. That is a deliberate empty slot rather than an oversight.

The reasoning is worth stating plainly, because it runs against how most pages handle a gap. A limit that is approximately right in the generous direction sends a woman to an office to be turned away, which costs her a morning. A limit that is approximately right in the strict direction stops her ringing at all, and she never learns that she qualified. The second failure is invisible, it is the more common one, and it is the reason an empty slot is safer than a plausible number.

The office that holds the criteria is the BCCS program itself, reachable through the Healthy Texas Women program pages HHSC maintains¹ (checked 30 July 2026), and in practice the fastest human answer usually comes from a contracted screening provider’s eligibility staff, who apply the criteria daily. 2-1-1 Texas, on (877) 541-7905, will route you to a provider near your address⁴ (checked 30 July 2026). Ask them for the current criteria, and ask when they last checked.

Healthy Texas Women: the adjacent door that does have a published limit

Healthy Texas Women is a separate program with a published income limit of 204.2% of the federal poverty level, listed under code TA 41 on HHSC’s chart effective 1 April 2026⁵ (checked 30 July 2026). It is the most generous published limit of any program on that chart, and it is the door worth trying alongside a screening question rather than after it.

Against the 2026 federal poverty guidelines, 204.2% for a household of one is about $32,600 a year⁶ (2026 guidelines, checked 30 July 2026). Take that as an illustration of scale, not as your line: the guidelines are reissued every January, and a standard MAGI income disregard of five percentage points of FPL sits as a separate line on the same HHSC chart, worth $66.50 a month for one person plus $23.70 for each additional household member⁵. The countable figure is not the number on a pay stub, which is worked through in what counts as income in Texas.

Healthy Texas Women covers preventive and family planning services rather than full coverage, so it is not a substitute for a Marketplace plan. The full node is Healthy Texas Women, and the application is at applying through YourTexasBenefits⁷.

Why a diagnosis can open a pathway that income never would

Some Texas programs are diagnosis-led rather than income-led, which means the answer a household got last month can be wrong this month for reasons that have nothing to do with its income. That is a real structural feature of the Texas list, not a loophole.

It matters most here because of how thin the income-led side is. A parent or caretaker relative qualifies for Texas Medicaid only up to about 15% of the federal poverty level, the lowest parent threshold in the nation⁸ (KFF, as of January 2026), and a non-disabled, non-pregnant adult with no dependent children has no Medicaid category at any income at all. For a woman in that position, income is not a variable she can work with. A diagnosis is a different key entirely, and it turns a different lock.

The operative rule to carry out of this section: a denial for one Texas program is not an answer about any other program. Take the denial notice, note the program name printed on it, and ask the next office a fresh question. Where a decision was wrong on the facts rather than on the rule, appealing a denial in Texas sets out the HHSC route and its deadline.

What this page will not do is name a program, a code, an income limit, or a duration for a post-diagnosis Medicaid pathway. Those figures are not in this site’s verified set, and a wrong program name sends somebody to the wrong counter. Ask the screening provider or HHSC what the pathway is currently called and what it requires.

What a woman with no coverage actually does about a screening

The access layer moves faster than the eligibility layer, and it does not require qualifying for anything. This is the half of the subject the state pages tend to stop before.

Start with a community health center. Every center funded under the federal Health Center Program must run a sliding fee discount schedule based on household size and income against the current poverty guidelines: a full discount at or below 100% of the guidelines unless the center elects a nominal charge, partial discounts across at least three pay classes between 100% and 200%, and no discount above 200%. The line to quote at the desk is that the center “must operate in a manner such that no patient shall be denied service due to an individual’s inability to pay”⁹ (HRSA page last reviewed November 2025, checked 30 July 2026).

One caveat decides whether that helps with a mammogram: the discount applies to the health center’s own charges. Imaging, laboratory work, a pathology bill, and a specialty referral can each be priced separately by whoever performs them. Ask, before the appointment, which of those the center bills itself and which come from somewhere else. Texas had 71 reporting health center organizations serving 1,859,052 patients in 2024, 624,629 of them (33.60%) uninsured¹⁰ (2024 data, checked 30 July 2026), so this is a well worn path rather than an exception. See community health centers in Texas and how the sliding scale works.

When a health center is not the answer

A free or charitable clinic reaches higher up the income scale than a health center’s sliding fee schedule does, which is exactly why it is the next call rather than the last resort. More than 1,400 free and charitable clinics and charitable pharmacies operate nationally, and the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics states that patients are “typically within 100% to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level” and that “no one is turned away for an inability to pay”¹¹ (checked 30 July 2026). That 300% ceiling sits above the 200% point where a health center’s discounts stop. More in free and charitable clinics.

Underneath both of those sits the county. Every Texas county runs an indigent health care program whose minimum eligibility standard must incorporate a net income eligibility level equal to 21 percent of the federal poverty level, and the statutory list of basic services a county must cover includes medical screening services, laboratory and X-ray services, and physician services¹² (checked 30 July 2026). Counties may be more generous than the floor and none of that tells you what yours does: county indigent health care program.

What to ask, and what to write down

Treat this as three parallel conversations rather than one queue, because each office answers a different question and none of them will refer you to the other two.

1. The screening provider or BCCS program. Ask what the current program criteria are, what proof of income and residence they take, and whether they do the diagnostic follow up themselves or refer it out.
2. HHSC, through a single household application. One application at YourTexasBenefits is screened against Medicaid, CHIP, and Healthy Texas Women together⁷, which is why a household frequently gets a split result. Of the three, Healthy Texas Women at 204.2% of the federal poverty level is the one most likely to reach an adult woman⁵ (effective 1 April 2026, checked 30 July 2026).
3. A health center or free clinic, for what happens between now and either answer.

Write down the date of every call, the name of the person, and the exact program name they used. Program names in Texas are close enough to each other that a paraphrase from memory is not usable three weeks later, and a later appeal or a second application usually turns on what you were told and when. Ask for anything important in writing or in the online account.

Why the missing numbers on this page stay missing

Because a figure ships here only once it has been read off the agency’s own published source and stamped with the date it was checked, and the BCCS criteria have not been. Everything above that does carry a number carries 30 July 2026 with it, including the one figure this page leans on hardest: Healthy Texas Women at 204.2% of the federal poverty level, effective 1 April 2026 on HHSC’s own chart⁵.

There is a refresh rhythm behind that. Every January the federal poverty guidelines are reissued, and every percentage on this site is recalculated against them, so no dollar illustration here should be carrying a prior year guideline past 31 January. When a figure passes its window without being re-confirmed, the page says so rather than leaving it looking current. That is also why the BCCS slot is visibly empty instead of quietly filled.

Texas Care Map is published independently. It has no affiliation with the State of Texas, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Healthy Texas Women, the Texas Department of Insurance, or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and it cannot enroll anyone in anything or decide any case.