United States
Hong KongFive distractor patterns in the Texas portion
The 30 Texas questions fail for different reasons than the 100 general ones. Five patterns account for most of it: the wrong actor, the federal rule offered against a state question, a neighboring statutory period, the right duty on the wrong trigger, and the wrong rung of the penalty ladder.
Thirty questions on Texas statute, sat inside the same paper as the 100 general ones and scored together with them. They are not passed separately, and they are also not lost the same way.
A general question usually catches you on a comparison. A Texas question catches you on a detail you had no reason to notice, and the detail is nearly always one of five things.
- Texas scored questions
- 30
- Texas sections in the outline
- 4
- Section counts
- 14 common, 6 life only, 7 health only, 3 HMO
- Also administered
- 5 unscored Texas pretest questions
- Our Texas bank
- 300 questions
- Behind them
- 47 chapters of the Texas Insurance Code
One: the wrong actor
This is the state portion's version of the near-synonym trap, and it is the biggest single family here. Texas insurance regulation involves the Commissioner of Insurance, the Department itself, the Guaranty Association, the insurer, and the agent, and each of them holds powers and duties the others do not.
So a question about who may suspend a license offers the Department where the answer is the Commissioner. A question about who pays a claim when an insurer becomes insolvent offers TDI where the answer is the Guaranty Association. The verb in the stem is right in both options. The subject is not.
Read state questions subject first. Who is doing the thing, to whom, under whose authority. Then look at the options.
Two: the federal answer to a state question
Health insurance in the United States is governed in layers, and a candidate who has just worked through the general portion is fresh on the federal one. Medicare eligibility, the Affordable Care Act, COBRA continuation, HIPAA. All of that is examinable and all of it sits in the general sections.
The Texas sections ask what Texas requires, which is sometimes the same, sometimes stricter, and sometimes about something federal law does not touch at all. A distractor built from the federal rule is attractive precisely because it is correct, in the other half of the paper.
The tell is in the stem, and it is usually explicit. If the words "in Texas" or "under Texas law" or "a policy issued in this state" appear, an option that only restates a federal minimum is very unlikely to be the key.
Three: the neighboring period
Statutory time limits are the most memorizable content on this exam and the most easily confused. Notice periods, filing windows, the number of days an insurer has to act, the period in which a replacement transaction must be documented.
Every one of those has neighbors, and the option list will contain them. Worse than in the general portion, because a statutory number has no logic behind it that you can reconstruct under pressure. Nothing about the Insurance Code tells you why a period is what it is. You know it or you guess.
Our Texas explanations name the chapter and section the answer comes from, because the Code is public domain and we hold 47 chapters of it. That is not decoration. A day count you can trace to a sentence in the statute sticks, and one you met as a bullet in a table does not.
Four: the right duty, the wrong trigger
A rule exists. The option states it accurately. It is wrong because the facts in the stem do not engage it.
Appointment questions are full of this. An agent acts for an insurer under an appointment, governed by Texas Insurance Code 4001.201 to .206, and that is separate from the license itself. A stem describing someone who holds a license but has not been appointed engages a different obligation than a stem describing an appointment that has been terminated, and the distractor is whichever duty the other fact pattern would have triggered.
The same thing happens with continuing education under chapter 4004, with replacement, and with anything where a duty attaches to an event rather than to a status. Ask what happened, not what is true.
Five: the wrong rung of the penalty ladder
Denial, suspension, revocation, refusal to renew, an administrative penalty, referral for prosecution. Texas has a graded set of consequences and the exam expects you to know which one attaches to which conduct.
Distractors here are simply the adjacent rung. Suspension where revocation is available, or a penalty where the statute permits both. Candidates who studied prohibited practices as a list of bad behaviors, without the consequence attached to each, get maybe half of these and feel unlucky.
| Pattern | Read the stem for | Ask yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong actor | The subject of the sentence | Commissioner, Department, Association, insurer or agent |
| Federal for state | The words "in Texas" | Does Texas add anything to the federal floor here |
| Neighboring period | What the clock attaches to | Can I name the provision, not just the number |
| Right duty, wrong trigger | The event, not the status | What happened, and when |
| Wrong rung | The conduct described | Which consequence does the Code attach to this |
Why this half is the cheaper half to fix
The general portion is 100 questions across nine sections of insurance principles. It takes weeks. The Texas portion is 30 questions across four sections of statute, and statute is finite, written down, and free to read.
That is our opinion about where the marginal hour goes, and we hold it firmly. If you have failed this exam once and are deciding what to do differently, the state sections are where the same effort buys the most, partly because they are small and mostly because they can be answered at speed, which then funds the general half. The timing side of that trade is worked through in the per-question arithmetic.
The gap in our own coverage
The content outline cites Title 28 of the Texas Administrative Code across the state sections, and we do not hold it. It is public and we simply have not harvested it yet. Where an answer turns on an administrative rule rather than on the statute, our explanation reasons from the Code and says so, instead of citing a rule number nobody here has read.
That is a real limitation and we would rather print it than let you find it. Everything on the statutory side is sourced to text we hold in full.
Common questions
How many Texas law questions are on the exam?
30 scored, across four sections: 14 on statutes common to life and health, 6 on life only, 7 on accident and health only, and 3 on health maintenance organizations. A further 5 unscored pretest questions come from the same sections.
Are the Texas questions harder than the general ones?
Different rather than harder. They are recall, so they are fast when you know them and impossible when you do not. The general portion asks you to compare concepts, which is slower but recoverable by reasoning on the day.
Why do I keep picking the Department instead of the Commissioner?
Because the verb in both options is correct and only the subject differs. It is the most common construction on the state side. Read the stem for who is acting before you read the options, rather than reading for the topic.
Do I need the Texas Administrative Code as well as the Insurance Code?
The content outline cites Title 28 across the state sections, so the rules are examinable. We hold 47 chapters of the Insurance Code and not 28 TAC, and we say so rather than implying our coverage is complete.
Can you pass without the Texas portion?
No, and not because it is scored separately, since it is not. The general and Texas questions are sat together and produce one result, so 30 questions you cannot answer come straight off a total you need in full.