Low-Income Women's Access to Family Planning

Texas provides increased access to reproductive health care services through a Section 1115 family planning waiver.  The waiver allows the state to cover family planning services for women residing in Texas who are U.S. citizens or qualified immigrants ages 18 through 44 with incomes at or below 185% of the federal poverty level who are not otherwise eligible for state and federal health care programs and who have no other family planning insurance coverage.

Beneficiaries of family planning coverage available through the waiver are not required to pay premiums or co-payments for covered services.  Covered services include: contraceptive education and counseling; FDA-approved and Medicaid-covered birth control including intrauterine devices, diaphragms, male and femal condoms, vaginal spermicides and contraceptive film, Norplant, Depo-Provera injections, and prescription methods (patches, rings, pills) within the Medicaid formulary; voluntary sterilization; family planning examinations including screening for diabetes, STIs, high blood pressure, and breast and cervical cancers and assessment of health risk factors in conjunction with a family planning encounter; and, laboratory and radiology procedures associated with family planning procedures.

The waiver will expire on Dec. 31, 2011.

Tex. Women's Health Program, Tex. Health and Human Svcs. Comm.., at  http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/womenshealth.htm (last visited Dec. 5, 2008); NARAL Pro-Choice America Survey of State Medicaid Offices