2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB3233
HB3233 prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from storing or processing Texas residents' patient data outside the United States or its territories.
Official caption: Relating to patient data maintained by pharmacy benefit managers.
Official report lists House author(s): Harris. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.
Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.
Bill highlights
Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.
- HB3233 prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from storing or processing Texas residents' patient data outside the United States or its territories.
- For this part of the Insurance Code, a pharmacy benefit manager is a person other than a pharmacy or pharmacist who acts as an administrator in connection with pharmacy benefits.
- The act adds a location restriction alongside existing patient-confidentiality protections.
What does it do?
HB3233 prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from storing or processing Texas residents’ patient data outside the United States or its territories. Both storage and processing are covered; the rule is not limited to the location of a company’s headquarters. It applies only to contracts entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, the act’s effective date. The governor signed June 20, 2025. Final law; history.
For this part of the Insurance Code, a pharmacy benefit manager is a person other than a pharmacy or pharmacist who acts as an administrator in connection with pharmacy benefits. The act does not impose this new geographic rule on every health-care provider simply because it handles patient records. Statutory definition.
The act adds a location restriction alongside existing patient-confidentiality protections. It does not itself specify encryption standards, a new breach-notice procedure, a patient compensation payment or a new dollar penalty. Keeping data within the permitted geography is not a guarantee that no breach will occur.
What changed along the way?
The filed bill broadly prohibited storage or processing outside the United States. The House committee substitute narrowed that proposal to countries designated under specified federal state-sponsor-of-terrorism authorities, and added the new-or-renewed-contract applicability rule.
The Senate substitute restored the broader geographic restriction while expressly permitting U.S. territories. It retained the contract timing rule. The House concurred in that version, which became law. Therefore, the enacted rule is not merely a ban on designated terrorism-sponsoring countries. Version index; adopted Senate substitute packet.
The amendment index lists no individual floor amendments. The material changes above are committee-substitute changes, including the Senate substitute adopted before House concurrence.
For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.
Official bill versions
Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.
Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?
Texas patients may benefit from the domestic-location restriction on pharmacy-benefit data handling. Pharmacy benefit managers using overseas storage or processing may need to change systems or service arrangements for covered contracts. The law does not quantify those private transition costs or establish that location alone makes data secure.
The May 25 final-stage fiscal note anticipates no significant state or local-government fiscal impact, assuming costs can be absorbed with existing resources. It does not estimate private compliance costs, insurance-premium changes or individual patient savings. No appropriation is made.
Review boundary: All three final sections, the substitute sequence, adopted Senate packet and all indexed fiscal notes were checked. This explains the enacted geographic rule, not the legality of a particular company’s technical arrangements or a finding about actual data locations.
Official sources
- Bill history and latest recorded action
- Bill versions, analyses and fiscal notes
- Action history and votes
- Amendment index
Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.
