Commissioner’s Bulletin # B-0041-05

The purpose of this bulletin is to provide information, including a brief summary, on selected bills enacted during the 79 ^th Regular Legislative Session. The summary highlights 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 includes four attachments. The first two attachments, A and B, include staff's summaries of the major bills that may affect you and the coverages that you issue, renew, sell, or service in Texas. The summaries also identify key compliance actions and responsibilities for insurers, HMOs, TPAs, URAs, MEWAs and agents implementing the new provisions. Along with the bill summaries, we have provided a "key" to abbreviations appearing in them.

The department has limited the summaries to providing information only with regard to the particular provisions of a bill that apply to life and 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 http://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.

Staff has not summarized the bills contained in Attachment C, as they relate only indirectly to the business of health and life coverage or affect a scope of business beyond just life and health care coverage. You may also access these bills at the Texas Legislature Online website cited above.

While the department has endeavored to include all recently enacted legislation relevant to life and health care coverage, the attachments may not list all legislation which may affect your life and health business or your agency. Moreover, it may not list every action you need to take to maintain compliance and implement new legislation. 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.

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, select Section Link "Bulletins/Rules", then scroll down on the new page to "Legislative Reports" and link to the implementation plan under the "2005 Legislative Session" heading.

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:

______________________________

Ana M. Smith-Daley

Acting Associate Commissioner

Life, Health, and Licensing Program

Attachments: (1) lhb41attacha.pdf, (2) lhb41attachb.pdf, (3) lhb41attachc.pdf are no longer available. Please contact life_health@tdi.state.tx.us