United States · Health insurance · Texas
How Much Is Health Insurance in Texas?
Budget $465 a month, or $5,583 over a year, if you are a single 40-year-old in the median Texas county and you are paying the full sticker price [1]. Most people will not pay that. A premium tax credit comes off the top and is set by where you live, so the same buyer on $55,000 pays a median of $195 a month, $2,335 a year, and on $40,000 a median of $25 a month [1]. The state is also less varied than the question implies: 136 of the 254 counties share one starting price exactly [1]. What that figure does not cover is the care. Add a year of managing type 2 diabetes to the cheapest sensible plan in the median county and the year comes to $6,533; add a normal delivery and it comes to $9,933 [1]. This page is about what to budget. If you want to know which plan to buy, that is the cheapest health insurance in Texas page, which names both plans in every one of the 254 counties.
What a year costs in the six largest Texas counties
A single non-smoking 40-year-old. "Cheapest premium" is full sticker price; the column beside it applies the premium tax credit a $55,000 single-person household qualifies for in that county [1]. The last column is twelve months of premium plus filed cost-sharing on the best plan available there for a year of managing type 2 diabetes.
| County | Plans priced | Cheapest premium | After the credit on $55,000 | A diabetes year, best plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harris County | 119 | $375/mo · $4,494/yr | $239/mo · $2,868/yr | $6,408 |
| Dallas County | 133 | $433/mo · $5,198/yr | $219/mo · $2,626/yr | $6,906 |
| Tarrant County | 91 | $433/mo · $5,198/yr | $219/mo · $2,626/yr | $7,614 |
| Bexar County | 38 | $475/mo · $5,700/yr | $168/mo · $2,018/yr | $7,669 |
| Travis County | 109 | $433/mo · $5,192/yr | $264/mo · $3,170/yr | $6,345 |
| Collin County | 122 | $433/mo · $5,198/yr | $219/mo · $2,626/yr | $6,906 |
1. The number to budget with
$465 a month, $5,583 over a year, for a single 40-year-old buying the cheapest plan available in the median Texas county at full price [1]. Most people will pay less than that, because a premium tax credit is subtracted before you see a bill and it is set by your county's benchmark plan rather than by the plan you pick.
Texas runs from $352 a month in Cottle County to $659 in Calhoun, which is $4,226 against $7,907 over a year [1]. Those are the edges and they are thinly populated. 217 of the 254 counties come in under $500 a month.
2. Why "average" is the wrong word here
The arithmetic mean of the 254 county prices is $478 a month, $5,742 a year, and no county in Texas charges it [1]. That is the ordinary problem with an average, and in Texas it is worse than ordinary, because the distribution is not a bell but a spike: 136 counties share one price exactly, and the 25th and 75th percentile counties are $7 a year apart.
The distribution of the cheapest available premium across all 254 Texas counties, at age 40 and before any credit [1]. The 25th percentile and the median land on the same figure because more than half the state sits at that one price, which is the shape of the finding rather than a fault in the table.
| Across the 254 counties | A month | A year | Counties at or below | For example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The cheapest county | $352 | $4,226 | 3 of 254 | Cottle County |
| 25th percentile | $465 | $5,583 | 189 of 254 | Anderson County |
| Median county | $465 | $5,583 | 189 of 254 | Anderson County |
| 75th percentile | $466 | $5,590 | 196 of 254 | Austin County |
| Average of the 254 | $478 | $5,742 | 206 of 254 | no county pays this |
| The dearest county | $659 | $7,907 | 254 of 254 | Calhoun County |
The cause is structural. Rates are filed per rating area rather than per county, Texas has 25 rating areas for 254 counties, and one of them covers 163 counties on its own [1][1,2]. Florida, with a quarter of the counties, gives every one of them its own rating area [1,2].
We could not find a stated reason for a rating area that large, and the filings do not carry one. It is the kind of decision that gets made once, at a state insurance department, and then quietly sets the price for more than half of a state for years afterwards.
Every distinct starting price in Texas, with the counties at it. 254 counties carry 38 prices between them, because rates are filed per rating area and a county sees only the plans whose service area reaches it [1].
| A month | A year | Counties | Rating area | Which counties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $352 | $4,226 | 3 | 24 | Cottle, Knox, McLennan |
| $355 | $4,257 | 1 | 5 | Cameron |
| $375 | $4,494 | 1 | 10 | Harris |
| $376 | $4,509 | 1 | 9 | El Paso |
| $380 | $4,564 | 1 | 15 | Hidalgo |
| $385 | $4,617 | 1 | 4 | Jefferson |
| $385 | $4,623 | 1 | 10 | Montgomery |
| $387 | $4,647 | 2 | 3 | Caldwell, Hays |
| $404 | $4,843 | 2 | 13 | Gregg, Upshur |
| $404 | $4,847 | 1 | 7 | Nueces |
| $409 | $4,906 | 2 | 4 | Hardin, Orange |
| $420 | $5,045 | 1 | 16 | Midland |
| $427 | $5,123 | 1 | 21 | Bowie |
| $429 | $5,150 | 2 | 7 | Aransas, San Patricio |
| $433 | $5,192 | 3 | 3 | Bastrop, Travis, Williamson |
| $433 | $5,198 | 9 | 8 | Collin, Dallas, Denton… |
| $448 | $5,370 | 3 | 6 | Brazos, Burleson, Robertson |
| $448 | $5,378 | 1 | 22 | Smith |
| $451 | $5,413 | 14 | 26 | Blanco, Burnet, Cooke… |
| $455 | $5,461 | 2 | 18 | Irion, Tom Green |
| $458 | $5,495 | 1 | 13 | Rusk |
| $465 | $5,583 | 136 | 26 | Anderson, Andrews, Angelina… |
| $466 | $5,590 | 7 | 10 | Austin, Brazoria, Fort Bend… |
| $475 | $5,700 | 8 | 19 | Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar… |
| $476 | $5,717 | 2 | 8 | Parker, Wise |
| $485 | $5,819 | 4 | 2 | Armstrong, Carson, Potter… |
| $487 | $5,845 | 2 | 14 | Crosby, Lubbock |
| $487 | $5,848 | 3 | 11 | Bell, Coryell, Lampasas |
| $489 | $5,864 | 1 | 10 | Chambers |
| $495 | $5,942 | 1 | 6 | Washington |
| $525 | $6,300 | 1 | 20 | Grayson |
| $552 | $6,618 | 1 | 8 | Delta |
| $556 | $6,672 | 7 | 24 | Archer, Baylor, Clay… |
| $574 | $6,888 | 1 | 12 | Webb |
| $581 | $6,966 | 10 | 1 | Callahan, Eastland, Haskell… |
| $609 | $7,306 | 1 | 17 | Ector |
| $651 | $7,809 | 13 | 26 | Bosque, Brown, Coleman… |
| $659 | $7,907 | 3 | 23 | Calhoun, Goliad, Victoria |
38 rows — scroll inside the table to read them all.
Thirty-eight prices for 254 counties, and only 37 counties sit outside the two biggest clusters. Those 37 are worth checking for, because the spread among them reaches roughly $200 a month [1].
3. What the credit does
What the premium tax credit does to the starting price, for a single-person household [1]. Each column is its own median across the 254 counties, so they do not subtract from one another.
| Household income | Median credit | Median cheapest premium after it | Counties where the credit covers it entirely |
|---|---|---|---|
| $55,000 | $3,107 | $195/mo · $2,335/yr | none of the 254 |
| $40,000 | $5,141 | $25/mo · $301/yr | 36 of 254 |
For a single-person household on $55,000 the median county costs $195 a month after the credit, $2,335 a year [1]. On $40,000 the median is $25 a month, and in 36 counties the credit exceeds the cheapest premium outright, so the plan costs nothing. The credit moves the budget far more than the county does.
It does not, however, change which plan is the right one. The credit is a fixed dollar amount set by your county's benchmark Silver plan and subtracted equally from every plan on the shelf, so the ordering is untouched until it covers the cheapest premium entirely [1,3,4]. A single person earning over $62,600 receives nothing at all for plan year 2026, because the enhanced credits expired at the end of 2025 [3,4].
4. The premium is not the bill
What a whole year costs, not a month: twelve months of premium plus that plan's own filed cost-sharing for the care named, median across the 254 counties [1]. The last column is what the same year costs if you buy the cheapest-premium plan in the county instead of the cheapest plan.
| A year in which… | Median total, best plan available | Range across the 254 counties | Median total if you buy on premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| you break an arm | $8,383 | $6,592 to $9,779 | $8,383 |
| you manage type 2 diabetes | $6,533 | $5,777 to $9,707 | $6,683 |
| you have a baby | $9,933 | $9,102 to $14,427 | $16,243 |
A year in the median Texas county costs $8,383 all in if you break an arm, $6,533 if you spend it managing type 2 diabetes, and $9,933 if it contains a normal delivery, each priced on the best plan available in that county [1]. The fracture year costing more than the diabetes year surprised us. An emergency visit and the imaging around it land against the deductible in a single week, while a year of generic prescriptions and quarterly office visits can be absorbed by flat copays that apply before any deductible does.
Buying on the monthly price alone changes one of those three figures badly. The median birth-year total rises from $9,933 to $16,243 if you take the cheapest-premium plan in your county rather than the cheapest plan [1], and that is the single largest avoidable cost we found anywhere in Texas.
5. Which page you actually want
Two questions get asked with the same words, and they have different answers.
What should I budget? is this page. It is about the spread of prices across the state, what a typical county charges, what the credit takes off and what a whole year costs once care is in it. You can answer it without knowing which county you will live in.
Which plan should I buy? is cheapest health insurance in Texas. That page prints all 254 counties with the cheapest-premium plan named, what that plan costs over a year of care, and the plan that beats it [1,2]. You cannot answer it without a county, because the winner changes.
If someone asked me what to budget in Texas without telling me where they live, I would give them $465 a month and then make them look their county up, because that figure is exactly right for 136 counties and roughly right for most of the rest.
6. What these numbers leave out
This prices one buyer: a single non-smoking 40-year-old with no dependants. A household of a different shape pays a different premium against the same cost-sharing, so the budget moves and the ranking underneath it mostly does not. The three care years are CMS's own stylised courses of treatment, identical in every county so that counties can be compared, and none of them is a forecast of the year you will have.
Prices are the lowest premium on sale in a county, not an average of all plans in it. A county where the cheapest plan is $465 a month will have plans above it, sometimes far above, and the tables here do not describe that upper tail. Networks and drug formularies are outside all of it.
Every figure comes from the CMS plan year 2026 filings, compiled on 3 September 2026 [1,2]. Plan year 2027 rates publish with open enrolment on 1 November, and these become last year's prices that day.
The whole Texas table downloads as a CSV: Texas county plan costs (762 rows). The three-state file is here.
Next: which plan to buy in your county, the carrier-level verdicts at best and worst marketplace plans, and health insurance with no deductible if a birth is what you are budgeting for.
Frequently asked questions
How much is health insurance a month in Texas?
What is the average cost of health insurance in Texas?
How much is health insurance in Texas for a single person?
What should I budget for a whole year, not just the premium?
Why do two Texas counties next door to each other charge the same?
Is this the same as the cheapest health insurance in Texas?
Sources
Every figure on this page is footnoted to one of the primary documents below. Reliability tiers: A = regulator, court or filed document; B = reputable publisher or carrier official page; C = user-generated (reported by users).
- 1.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — Qualified Health Plan Landscape and Benefits & Cost Sharing Public Use Files, plan year 2026. https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/resources/data/public-use-filesTier A · Regulator / court / filed document · Published 2026-08-01 · Accessed 2026-09-03
- 2.Best Worst Insurance — Annual cost of every marketplace plan in 409 counties, ranked two ways (PY2026). https://www.bestworstinsurance.com/data/us-health/county-plan-costs.csvTier A · Regulator / court / filed document · Published 2026-09-19 · Accessed 2026-09-19
- 3.Internal Revenue Service — Revenue Procedure 2025-25 — Applicable Percentage Table for 2026. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-25-25.pdfTier A · Regulator / court / filed document · Published 2025-07-18 · Accessed 2026-09-19
- 4.US Department of Health and Human Services, ASPE — 2025 Poverty Guidelines. https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelinesTier A · Regulator / court / filed document · Published 2025-01-17 · Accessed 2026-09-19