Rehabs That Take Cook Children's CHIP

What Is Cook Children’s CHIP?

Cook Children’s CHIP is a Texas CHIP managed care plan run by Cook Children’s Health Plan for children in the Tarrant Service Area. CHIP is federal and state coverage for uninsured children under 19 in families above the Medicaid income line, and the plan delivers that benefit under contract with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Alongside CHIP, the same plan offers CHIP Perinatal, STAR and STAR Kids in those counties, so a household with more than one child may hold two different lines of coverage from the same organization. Published sources describe Cook Children’s, Texas Children’s and Driscoll as community-based, non-profit children’s hospital health plans, which is why the Texas plan line-up mixes local names with national ones such as Aetna, Wellpoint, Molina and Medicaid brands owned by large insurers.

Who Runs the Plan

CHIP has no owner or parent company. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, within the US Department of Health and Human Services, sets the federal requirements, and each state agency runs its own program; in Texas that agency is the Health and Human Services Commission, which contracts the day-to-day work out to health plans such as Cook Children’s Health Plan.

Who Answers a Behavioral Health Call

Cook Children’s Health Plan lists member services on 1-800-964-2247, Monday to Friday 8AM to 5PM, a CHIP and STAR nurse line on 1-866-971-2665 around the clock, a behavioral health crisis line on 1-833-391-3733 around the clock, and TTY on 1-800-735-2988. The crisis line is the one that answers at night, which matters when a child needs mental health treatment outside office hours.

Who Is Eligible for Cook Children’s CHIP?

Texas CHIP covers children 18 and younger who are Texas residents and US citizens or qualified non-citizens, who hold no other health coverage, and whose family income sits above the Medicaid line but inside the state’s CHIP range. Cook Children’s CHIP adds one condition: the child has to live in its six-county service area.

Enrollment is not tied to a season. A family can apply at any time of year, and a single application sent through the state agency decides whether a child qualifies for Medicaid or for CHIP. Since January 1, 2024 states have had to give children under 19 twelve months of continuous eligibility in both programs, and a November 2024 federal rule removed unpaid premiums as a reason to end that coverage inside the twelve months. The national helpline for families is 1-877-KIDS-NOW, or 1-877-543-7669.

Which Counties Does Cook Children’s CHIP Cover?

Wise, Denton, Parker, Tarrant, Hood and Johnson counties, which the state groups together as the Tarrant Service Area. On the Texas map dated January 8, 2026, CHIP in that area is offered by Aetna, Cook Children’s and Wellpoint, and a family picks one of the three; STAR Kids in the same area lists Aetna and Cook Children’s.

CHIP Perinatal

CHIP Perinatal is prenatal and newborn coverage rather than a child’s own CHIP enrollment, and Cook Children’s Health Plan offers it across the same six counties. No behavioral health detail for that line appears in published plan material, so a pregnant member should ask member services which services carry over once the baby is born and the coverage changes.

Does Cook Children’s CHIP Cover Drug and Alcohol Rehab?

Yes. A separate CHIP has to cover services that prevent, diagnose and treat a broad range of mental health symptoms and disorders, including substance use disorders, under the federal SUPPORT Act from October 24, 2019, and Texas CHIP names mental health care among its benefits. Which settings get paid for is settled in Texas rather than in Washington.

The federal letter that carries that duty names no levels of care at all. It does not list detox, residential rehab, partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient treatment; instead a state has to show its benefit array is wide enough to treat a broad range of behavioral health symptoms and disorders. That is why coverage for a 16-year-old differs from one state to the next, and why the question for a family is always what the Texas benefit and the plan’s own criteria allow.

Two federal limits still protect a member. Any amount, duration or scope limit on behavioral health services is allowed only where the state can show it may be exceeded when medically necessary. And limits on behavioral health benefits may be no more restrictive than the limits on medical and surgical benefits, which reaches copays, coinsurance, service caps and the medical necessity criteria themselves. A step down from a residential stay to an intensive outpatient program or to weekly outpatient care is reviewed on the same footing.

Does Cook Children’s CHIP Cover Suboxone or Methadone?

Yes, as a benefit category. Federal guidance requires CHIP to cover medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, though only as clinically appropriate for a child, and it names no individual drug. Formularies sit with the state, so the plan’s drug list and any quantity rule decide the particular medicine.

How a Level of Care Gets Decided

Federal guidance names three assessment tools as examples for deciding a behavioral health level of care: The ASAM Criteria, the Child and Adolescent Service Intensity Instrument and the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths tool. No federal prior authorization list exists for CHIP; the rule is written by the state program or the health plan, and medical necessity criteria fall under the parity test described above.

How Much Does Rehab Cost With Cook Children’s CHIP?

Texas CHIP charges an enrollment fee of $50 or less per family per year, with copays of $3 to $5 for lower-income families and $20 to $35 for higher-income families on doctor visits and medicine. Total cost sharing in CHIP is generally capped at 5% of a family’s annual income, and well-child visits carry no charge at all.

Those figures are the member’s side of the ledger, not the price of treatment. The sums below are what a program bills in the open market before any coverage applies, and they are the numbers a family meets only when the care falls outside the plan.

Across the states the middle half of residential prices runs $6,000 to $30,000 a month and the middle half of partial hospitalization prices runs $7,000 to $15,000 a month. CHIP and Medicaid pay contracted state rates rather than those sticker figures, Medicare pays its own fee schedule, and a private plan applies a deductible and coinsurance, which is why the plan card changes the arithmetic so completely. Where no coverage reaches the care, self-pay or a sliding scale is what is left.

What the Family Pays and What the Plan Pays

Texas runs both CHIP designs at once, and the design decides the bill. A child funded through the Medicaid expansion side follows Medicaid cost sharing rules and generally receives services without enrollee charges. A child in separate CHIP, which is the side Cook Children’s CHIP sits on, pays the Texas enrollment fee and copays above, with the annual 5% ceiling as the backstop.

How Do I Find a Rehab That Takes Cook Children’s CHIP?

Call Cook Children’s Health Plan member services on 1-800-964-2247, or the behavioral health crisis line on 1-833-391-3733 at any hour, and ask for a contracted substance use program that treats the child’s age group in your county. Ask the admissions team two things: whether it holds a contract with this plan, and which Texas license it treats adolescents under.

There is no national CHIP provider directory, because networks are set by each state program and its contracted health plans. The state agency line is 800-335-8957, the national family helpline is 1-877-543-7669, and the federal information site for children’s coverage carries a state selector with local contacts and how to apply. Where a child needs care outside the six counties, the question to the plan is how an out-of-area authorization is handled before anyone travels.

Programs that accept this coverage are gathered on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) page, with related pages for medical detox, inpatient rehab and state licensed rehab. Each listing shows the levels of care a program offers, the payments it says it accepts, licensing and accreditation shown where The Joint Commission or CARF lists the facility, and how far the site sits from the nearest airport.

Is Cook Children’s CHIP the Same as Texas Children’s Health Plan?

No. Cook Children’s Health Plan, based in Fort Worth, is a separate company from the Houston-based Texas Children’s Health Plan, from Driscoll Health Plan in Corpus Christi and from Dell Children’s Health Plan. The four are often confused because each grew out of a Texas children’s hospital and each serves different service areas.

They did share one fight. The state announced new STAR and CHIP contract awards on March 7, 2024, worth about $116 billion and due to start September 1, 2025, under which Cook Children’s, Texas Children’s, Superior and Wellpoint would have lost service areas and about 1.8 million Texans would have had to switch plans. Those four challenged the awards, a Travis County district judge granted a temporary injunction on October 4, 2024, and the state appealed on October 21, 2024 to the 15th Court of Appeals. As of August 13, 2025 Cook Children’s reported that no new contracts had been signed and existing plans continued as before, and the state map dated January 8, 2026 still shows the earlier line-up.

References and Citations

• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — CHIP eligibility and cost sharing rules, program design options, continuous eligibility requirements, and the state health official letter on required behavioral health and medication treatment benefits.
• Texas Health and Human Services Commission — Medicaid and CHIP managed care service area map dated January 8, 2026, with program descriptions and the managed care organization contact list.
• Cook Children’s Health Plan — CHIP, CHIP Perinatal, STAR and STAR Kids program pages, Tarrant Service Area counties, member services, nurse line and behavioral health crisis line.
• MACPAC and KFF — CHIP enrollment by state and federal fiscal year, program design classifications and state program name tables.
• RehabSeekers directory listings and market rate research, United States, 2026. Ranges are indicative and vary by facility, length of stay and coverage.