Healthy Texas insurance and cost sharing accounts

Financial help makes affordable insurance available to small businesses

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is using part of a $50 million federal grant to provide cost sharing accounts to help low-income working Texans purchase health insurance. The state willl contribute 20% of the cost. Cost savings accounts are designed for Texans earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $66,000 for a family of four. Coverage is now available through a partnership between the state and Unitedhealthcare or Celtic Insurance Company. An annotated version of the statute governing this program is available at OnlineNevigator.org.

The insurance and cost sharing accounts are available through Healthy Texas program and two other new programs not available through an insurance exchange:

• TexHealth Coalition provides affordable health coverage to small businesses in Galveston and Central Texas. It will expand to Houston, Dallas, El Paso and the Brazos Valley within a year.
• Community First Health Plan will begin offering a new coverage for small employers in Bexar County and seven surrounding counties in January.

These cost sharing accounts were originally designed to help low-income employees pay for insurance premiums or co-pays and deductibles but the two programs currently available on the Freedom Benfits insurance exchange use the funds only to reduce large medical claims and thereby keep the cost of insurance lower. For the employer, there will be no difference between Healthy Texas and any other private market health insurance plan they might purchase. Healthy Texas builds on the existing employer-based health insurance model, minimizing additional administrative costs. Healthy Texas also creates an infrastructure compatible with an insurance exchange model.

The Healthy Texas program does not have any impact on or connection to the federal small business health care tax credits that may also be available.

See these additional resources for more information:

• Pros and Cons of Healthy Texas
• Healthy Texas Alternatives
• (Celtic Healthy Texas is no longer available through OnlineAdviser so these resources are removed)