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. 14, 2009); NARAL Pro-Choice America Survey of State Medicaid Offices