Skip to Top Main Navigation Skip to Left Navigation Skip to Content Area Skip to Footer
Texas Department of Insurance
Topics:   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z All

Commissioner’s Bulletin # B-0043-03

October 29, 2003


To:  

Re:   Regarding 78th Session - Bill Summary and Highlights Pertinent to Life and Health Coverage


The purpose of this bulletin is to provide information, including a brief summary, on selected bills enacted during the 78th Regular Legislative Session. The summary will highlight portions of the bills pertinent to the business of life and health coverage, including the effective and implementation dates, as well as identify some of the responsibilities and/or actions the bills require of insurers, HMOs, TPAs, URAs, MEWAs, and agents.

This bulletin is divided into three attachments listing the major bills that may affect you and the coverages that you issue, renew, sell, or service in Texas. While the department has attempted to ensure that the attachments include all recently enacted legislation relevant to life and health care coverage, this bulletin may not include all legislation which may affect your life and health business. While we encourage you to use the bulletin to aid your compliance efforts, you remain responsible for ensuring compliance with all enacted legislation affecting the business you conduct.

The department has summarized the pertinent bills in Attachments A and B. The bill summaries also provide information on actions required and responsibilities of insurers, HMOs, TPAs, URAs, MEWAs and agents necessary to implement the new provisions. Along with the bill summaries, we have provided a "key" to abbreviations appearing in them.

The bills contained in Attachment C are not summarized, as they relate only indirectly to the business of health and life coverage or affect businesses beyond just those providing life and health care coverage.

The department has limited the summaries to providing information only with regard to the particular provisions of a bill that apply to life/health coverage or licensing issues. You will need to refer to the actual bills for the complete content of the legislation. You may access an electronic copy of the bills in two ways. You may access the bills directly from the attachments, as each bill number will link you directly to the enrolled bill text. Alternatively, you may access the bills, as well as a broad variety of other legislative information, at the Texas Legislature Online website at www.capitol.state.tx.us. You may obtain paper copies of the bills for a charge by contacting, for House and Senate bills respectively, House Bill Distribution at 512-463-1144 and Senate Bill Distribution at 512-463-0252.

To complement your review of this listing of the major bills, the department has posted its legislative implementation plan on the TDI website at www.tdi.state.tx.us. When you open TDI's Website, open the box entitled "More Popular Links," then scroll down to "Legislation Implementation" and click it to open the implementation plan.

We request that you share this information with your staff, agents, and other affected parties so that you may completely and timely implement any changes necessary to comply with new and amended statutes.

If you have questions concerning the attachments please contact the following divisions as applicable:


Life/Health Division at 512-322-3409 or E-Mail: LifeHealth@tdi.texas.gov
HMO/URA/QA Division at 512-322-4266 or E-Mail: MCQA@tdi.texas.gov
Licensing Division at 512-322-3503 or E-mail: License@tdi.texas.gov
______________________________
Bill Bingham
Deputy for Regulatory Matters
Life, Health, and Licensing Program

Attachments: A, B, C, and Key of Abbreviations



For more information, contact: ChiefClerk@tdi.texas.gov