Texas Health Programs: The Full State List and Who Each One Is For

Beyond Medicaid and CHIP, Texas runs a scattered list of separate health programs: Healthy Texas Women, CHIP Perinatal, Texas Health Steps, county indigent health care, Breast and Cervical Cancer Services, the Kidney Health Care Program, the Children with Special Health Care Needs Services Program, and mental health services through the local authorities. They are not one system with one door, and nobody hands you the list, which is why households routinely miss a program they qualified for the whole time.

Part of my job as a Certified Application Counselor is knowing that list by heart, because the second half of most appointments is not the application, it is working sideways after a denial. This page is that list with the published rule, the source, and the date attached to each entry. It is not an eligibility determination. Only HHSC can decide a Medicaid, CHIP, or Healthy Texas Women case, and only your county can decide a county case.

Which Texas health programs exist, and who is each one for?

Sort them by what opens the door rather than by what they cover, because that is how you find the one you have missed. Four things open doors in Texas: an age, a pregnancy, a diagnosis, or an address.

Program	Opened by	Published limit
Children’s Medicaid	Age of the child	198% FPL under 1, 144% ages 1 to 5, 133% ages 6 to 18
CHIP	Age, above the Medicaid line	201% FPL
CHIP Perinatal	Pregnancy	202% FPL
Medicaid for Pregnant Women	Pregnancy	198% FPL
Healthy Texas Women	Age and sex, women’s preventive care	204.2% FPL
Transitional Medicaid	Leaving the caretaker category on earnings	185% FPL
Texas Health Steps	Being a child enrolled in Medicaid	Not an income test
County indigent health care	County of residence	At least 21% FPL, county sets its own
Breast and Cervical Cancer Services	A screening or diagnosis	Set by the program
Kidney Health Care Program	End stage renal disease	Set by the program
Children with Special Health Care Needs	A qualifying condition in a child	Set by the program
Local mental health authority services	Where you live	Set locally

The percentages come from HHSC’s chart in the Texas Works Handbook C-130, effective 1 April 2026¹, and four of them are independently matched by the federal eligibility standards table, which lists Texas children at 198%, 144%, and 133% and separate CHIP at 201%². All checked 30 July 2026. Where the table says “set by the program”, this site does not publish a number, and the reason is in the last section.

Healthy Texas Women: the highest published limit on the chart

Healthy Texas Women reaches 204.2% of the federal poverty level, which is the most generous published limit of any program on HHSC’s chart, listed under the code TA 41¹ (effective 1 April 2026, checked 30 July 2026). It covers women’s preventive and family planning services rather than full health coverage, so it is not a substitute for a Marketplace plan or Medicaid, but it reaches households that every other adult pathway in Texas turns away.

Against the 2026 poverty guidelines, 204.2% for a household of one works out at about $32,600 a year³ (guidelines checked 30 July 2026). Take that as an illustration of scale, not as your line: the guideline changes every January, and the five percentage point MAGI income disregard on the same HHSC chart means the countable income is not the number on your pay stub.

HHSC also operates Healthy Texas Women Plus, an enhanced set of services layered on top of the program for women who qualify. This site does not yet list what Plus adds, because the program’s own pages moved and we could not confirm the current service list against a live HHSC source on 30 July 2026. Ask when you apply, or call 2-1-1⁴. A guessed service list on a page like this is worse than no list: it is the sort of thing that makes somebody skip an appointment they were entitled to. The full node is Healthy Texas Women.

The children’s and pregnancy programs

These are where Texas eligibility is genuinely broad, and where a household denied for the adults very often still has approvable members. Four programs sit here.

• Children’s Medicaid, by age band: 198% FPL for infants under 1, 144% for ages 1 to 5, and 133% for ages 6 to 18¹ (checked 30 July 2026). Siblings can land in different programs on the same application.
• CHIP, at 201% FPL, for children above the Medicaid line¹. See CHIP and Children’s Medicaid in Texas.
• Medicaid for Pregnant Women, at 198% FPL, with postpartum coverage that “lasts during pregnancy and up to 12 months after the baby is born” in HHSC’s own words⁵ (checked 30 July 2026). More in Medicaid for pregnant women in Texas.
• CHIP Perinatal, at 202% FPL, which is designed around covering the pregnancy and reaches households other pathways do not. HHSC states that it “covers care during pregnancy and two doctor visits within 60 days after the pregnancy ends”⁵.

That last line is the one to read twice. Postpartum coverage is 12 months on Medicaid and 60 days on CHIP Perinatal. The two programs sit next to each other on the same page of the same website, they have similar names and near-identical income limits, and the difference at the other end is ten months. Check the program name on the approval letter before you book a postpartum appointment. Detail in CHIP Perinatal.

Texas Health Steps is the Texas name for the federal EPSDT benefit: checkups, dental care, and case management for children and young people enrolled in Medicaid. It is not a separate application and not an income test, it is an entitlement that comes with the Medicaid enrollment. What this site does not yet publish is the checkup schedule by age, because it has not been read off an HHSC source and dated. See Texas Health Steps.

County indigent health care: the program nobody mentions

Every Texas county runs an indigent health care program, the state sets a floor rather than a uniform rule, and the answer to almost every question about it is county by county. The statutory minimum eligibility standard “must incorporate a net income eligibility level equal to 21 percent of the federal poverty level”⁶ (checked 30 July 2026), and a county may set a more generous standard but not a more restrictive one.

The statute lists the basic services a county program must cover, and one item in that list is worth the whole section for anyone on a long-term medication:

• primary and preventative services, including immunizations, medical screening services, and annual physical examinations
• inpatient and outpatient hospital services
• rural health clinics
• laboratory and X-ray services
• family planning services
• physician services
• payment for not more than three prescription drugs a month
• skilled nursing facility services, regardless of the patient’s age

Two figures attached to the program are regularly misquoted, and getting them the wrong way round changes what a reader does next.

• The $30,000 and 30 day cap is real, and it is a cap on the county. Section 61.035 limits a county’s liability per eligible resident per state fiscal year to “the payment of 30 days of hospitalization or treatment in a skilled nursing facility, or both, or $30,000, whichever occurs first”⁶ (checked 30 July 2026).
• The 8% is not a cap at all. Under section 61.037 the state begins reimbursing a county once that county has spent at least eight percent of its general revenue levy for the year on eligible services, with a notification duty triggered at six percent⁶. It is a reimbursement trigger between two levels of government. Written carelessly it reads as “the county stops helping at 8%”, which is the opposite of what the section does.

None of this tells you what your county actually does, only what the floor is. The county program office, or 2-1-1⁴, is the only source for your address. Full node: county indigent health care program.

The diagnosis-led programs

Three Texas programs are organized around a condition rather than around income alone, which means a diagnosis can open a pathway that was closed to the same household a week earlier.

• Breast and Cervical Cancer Services, the state screening and diagnostic program. See Breast and Cervical Cancer Services.
• The Kidney Health Care Program, the state program for people with end stage renal disease. See Kidney Health Care Program.
• The Children with Special Health Care Needs Services Program, for children with a qualifying condition. See children with special health care needs.

This site publishes no eligibility figure for any of the three at present, because none has been confirmed against a live HHSC or DSHS source and dated. That is a deliberate gap rather than an oversight, and the standing rule behind it is in the last section. Take the program name to HHSC or to 2-1-1 and ask for the current criteria.

Mental health services through the local authorities

Texas delivers publicly funded mental health care through local authorities rather than through one statewide program. HHSC “contracts with 37 local mental health authorities (LMHAs) and two local behavioral health authorities (LBHAs) to deliver mental health services in communities across Texas”, and each authority’s “referral line provides confidential help 24/7”⁷ (checked 30 July 2026). HHSC publishes a searchable directory of them.

For a crisis rather than an appointment, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, free and confidential at any hour, in English and Spanish, with chat available. No coverage check is involved.

What this site does not claim is that local authorities are required to charge on a sliding scale. It is widely stated and it was not confirmed on the HHSC page when we checked on 30 July 2026, so ask the authority directly what you will be charged. More in mental health care without insurance.

How to work out which program to try

Apply once at YourTexasBenefits, then work sideways instead of reapplying. One HHSC application is screened against Medicaid, CHIP, and Healthy Texas Women together⁸, which is why the most common Texas outcome is a split result: children approved, adult denied. That is normal, not a sign the form was filled in wrong.

A sequence that works, in the order I use it at the desk:

1. Submit the household application at YourTexasBenefits, with income documents ready. See applying through YourTexasBenefits and what counts as income in Texas.
2. Read the notice for the program name and the effective date, not just the word approved or denied.
3. Check the age-led and pregnancy-led programs for anyone in the household the first decision did not cover.
4. Check the diagnosis-led programs if anyone has one of the conditions above.
5. Call your county about its indigent program, and 2-1-1 for anything local.
6. Appeal only if the facts were wrong. You have 90 days from the effective date of the HHSC action, orally or in writing⁹ (checked 30 July 2026). Late is not automatically fatal: only the hearings officer decides timeliness, and good cause can be accepted. See appealing a denial in Texas.

If the answer across all six steps is no, that is a real answer and it has its own map: getting care without insurance in Texas. For how the programs here fit against Medicaid and the Marketplace, start at health coverage in Texas and Texas Medicaid eligibility.

Why some limits on this page are missing

Because an approximate income limit is more dangerous than a missing one. A number that is slightly wrong in the generous direction sends somebody to an office to be turned away. A number slightly wrong in the strict direction stops them applying for something they would have got, and that reader never finds out.

So the standing rule on this site is that a figure ships only when it has been read off the agency’s own published source and stamped with the date it was checked. Where that has not happened, the slot stays empty and the page says which office holds the answer. Every program limit above carries 30 July 2026. In January the federal poverty guidelines are reissued and every percentage-derived figure here moves with them, so nothing on this page should carry a prior-year guideline past 31 January.

Texas Care Map is independent and is not affiliated with the State of Texas, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Texas Department of Insurance, or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.