My son turns 19 in December and his CHIP ends. What is he even supposed to apply for after that?

I have read about half this forum tonight and I think I already know the answer, but I want somebody to say it to me plainly.

Two boys. The older one, Jaylen, turns 19 on December 9. Both kids have been on CHIP for three years and it has honestly been the one part of our life that worked. He has asthma, two inhalers, and he sees the same doctor he has seen since he was little.

He is finishing at the community college in the spring and works about 20 hours a week at a grocery store. He files his own taxes because his job made him, but I still claim him. Or I did last year. I do not actually know if that matters.

I work for a small company with no insurance and my husband drives for himself. So there is no parent plan to put him on. What happens on December 10? Is there an adult version of CHIP? A friend said there is not, and I said that cannot be right.

Your friend is right, I am sorry. There is no grown up CHIP in Texas and there is no Medicaid for a young man with no kids and no disability, at any income. I learned that one at 19 myself.

But do not stop at that, because the claiming him on your taxes thing matters a lot for the Marketplace, and somebody who knows the rules better than me will be along.

The asthma part is what I would sort first. Get him registered at a health center now while he still has the card, so the inhalers do not stop the week the coverage does. Paperwork is easier when nothing is urgent.

Brenda, sorry for the slow reply, I wanted to answer this properly and I ended up writing the whole thing out, because you are the fourth parent to ask me this at the clinic desk since August.

Raylene is right about the hard part. Children's Medicaid and CHIP are programs for children, and at 19 a young man who is not a parent and does not have a disability has no Texas Medicaid category to move into. If Jaylen's asthma were severe enough to count as a disability that would be a different conversation, and it is one for HHSC, not for me.

Here is the part that is not bad news. Losing CHIP counts as losing coverage for the Marketplace, and the federal rule gives him 90 days after the loss to choose a plan, which is longer than the usual 60. He can also pick one before the loss. So the plan is to run a HealthCare.gov application in November, before his birthday, not after.

And the tax question is the whole question. The Marketplace measures a household largely by tax filing. If you will claim him as a dependent for 2027, he is counted in your household and on your income, not on his grocery store wages alone. Whether that puts the household inside the subsidy range, which runs from 100% to 400% of the poverty level, is exactly what the application will tell you. Please do not guess it from a forum, including from me.

It is all in turning 19 in Texas, with the checklist I wish I had used for my own son, and the income rules are in what counts as income in Texas. And Hector's advice is the best line in this thread. Register him at a health center before December.

Thank you, all of you. I had no idea the claiming him thing could change the answer. I will be honest, I also had no idea we could do any of this before his birthday. I was going to wait for the letter.

Update. Did a HealthCare.gov application with a counselor at the health center on Saturday, as a household of four the way we file. It came back with a tax credit for him. Not nothing, not free, but a number we can actually do. We will pick the plan in November so it starts when CHIP stops.

Also registered him at the health center the same morning. They can do his inhalers on the sliding scale if anything goes wrong in between. I feel a lot less sick about December than I did two weeks ago.