We are concerned that the Healthy Texas Women (HTW) 1115 Demonstration Waiver implementation has included the removal of three critical HTW components:
- Auto-enrollment of new mothers from Pregnant Women’s Medicaid into HTW;
- Adjunctive eligibility for women applying for HTW that are already enrolled in WIC, have a child in Medicaid, or in a household that receives SNAP or TANF; and
- the Simplified HTW Application Form (Form H1867).
The policies above have been very popular and have helped boost client enrollment in HTW over the last several years – thereby reducing unintended pregnancies, improving health, and reducing costs to the state. In fact, in fiscal year 2019 alone, over 80,000 new mothers were auto-enrolled into HTW. Now, with the removal of these three critical policies as part of the HTW 1115 waiver, we are concerned that the goals of HTW — including connecting women to health care and encouraging HTW provider participation — will be undermined. Ultimately, eliminating the above three policies could drastically decrease enrollment in HTW and access to women’s preventive care, which presents a serious risk to Texas’s ability to achieve the budget neutrality expenditure targets included in the Standard Terms and Conditions of the approved waiver and could risk continued federal funding.
