Aetna — Texas Behavioral Health Rate Reference

Aetna in Texas behavioral health — overview

Aetna files its commercial behavioral health rates under two entity names in the federal Transparency in Coverage (TiC) machine-readable file: Aetna Health Inc. and Aetna Life Insurance Company. The Texas commercial market is served through both entities depending on plan type.

Aetna's Texas footprint covers commercial individual, small group, and large group markets. The TiC MRF data used in this benchmark is sourced from Aetna's CDN-hosted national file — a structural difference from UHC and Cigna, which maintain more geographically scoped Texas-specific OHBS-format files. Aetna's national file is filtered to Texas providers by NPI state, which introduces a distinct set of data considerations addressed in the sections below.

Aetna Texas rate benchmark for CPT 90837

The live rate distribution — median, percentile spread, sample size, and confidence — is published on the Aetna Texas 90837 benchmark page and mirrored below. RateScope renders these figures directly from the sealed benchmark, so this page can never disagree with the live data. Until the Aetna Texas cohort clears validation against subscriber-confirmed rates, the figures read as pending validation rather than a point-in-time number.

Aetna's Texas figures are derived from its CDN-hosted national TiC file, filtered to Texas providers by NPI. The national-file structure means the provider count reflects national contracting patterns among Texas-based NPIs, not a Texas-specific panel — read the benchmark with that caveat in place. Aetna's master's-level and psychologist buckets are reported separately; the relationship between them is part of the published distribution rather than something this page asserts in advance.

How Aetna compares to other Texas payers

Each payer's Texas filing has a different structure: Aetna files a national MRF filtered to Texas NPIs; UHC and BCBS Texas file more geographically scoped schedules; Cigna's network spans multiple plan products. Those structural differences shape how each benchmark should be read, so cross-payer comparison is directional rather than a like-for-like rate match. See each payer's reference page for the structural detail behind its distribution.

Aetna Transparency in Coverage data

Network entity names: Aetna Health Inc. / Aetna Life Insurance Company

File structure: CDN-hosted national MRF. Aetna uses a two-step session flow for accessing the TiC index — see docs/05-research/payer-access/aetna-mrf-access.md for the access pattern. This differs from UHC (static OHBS-5 URL) and Cigna (CloudFront signed URLs that rotate on HTTP 403).

Data vintage: 2026

Texas extraction method: National file filtered by provider NPI to Texas-based providers. This is the primary structural difference from UHC, BCBS Texas, and Cigna, which have more geographically scoped file structures.

CPT codes covered: CPT 90837 confirmed in the benchmark dataset. Additional outpatient behavioral health codes are present in the national file.

Negotiated type: negotiated and fee schedule — consistent with CMS TiC schema requirements.

Known limitation: The national-file structure means the provider count includes any Texas NPI present in Aetna's national contract database, not only those actively seeing members in Texas commercial plans. Rate distributions may reflect a broader set of contracting arrangements than a TX-specific file would capture.

Reference card

• Payer entity: Aetna Health Inc. / Aetna Life Insurance Company
• TiC filing type: CDN-hosted national MRF (two-step session access)
• Data vintage: 2026
• CPT 90837 master's-level median: pending validation
• CPT 90837 master's-level provider sample: pending validation
• CPT 90837 psychologist median: pending validation
• National file caveat: TX-filtered from national MRF; provider count reflects national contracting, not a TX-only panel
• Credential bucket: LCSW, LPC, LMFT pooled as master's-level
• Report page: Aetna Texas 90837
• Methodology: RateScope methodology

See also

• Aetna Texas 90837 report — full distribution with confidence scoring
• UHC payer reference — Optum OHBS network structure
• BCBS Texas payer reference — TX-specific HCSC network
• Cigna payer reference — multi-product network (PPO / HMO / OAP)
• LCSW credential reference — how the credential maps to payer rate tiers
• Methodology — how TiC filings are processed and benchmarks are built