Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
Regulators propose tracking student health coverage problems
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates on legal issues regarding children’s health. A recent article in TheBoston Globe announced regulatory rules that were proposed at a public hearing as part of the state’s attempt to track college students and any problems or complaints they have about health insurance coverage. The proposed rules are set to go into effect on May 1st.
Reports presented at the hearing suggest that there is an increase in the number of students and their families who end up with enormous medical bills after accidents or serious injuries when the policies sold to students only provided limited coverage.
According to the article, Aaron Marden, a Tufts senior, founded the Student Health Organizing Coalition, a group lobbying for more comprehensive plans. Students feel the proposed rules should also require colleges to offer plans with greater coverage.
Current state regulations require college students to have health insurance but allow insurers to substantially limit coverage. Most of the current policies don’t meet the minimum standards set for other plans as part of the state’s 2006 near-universal health law.
About 77,800 college students are currently covered by plans that cap payments at $50,000 a year per injury or illness, but that doesn’t cover expenses of a serious accident. Many include a $1,500 a year limit on prescriptions and other services.
The Division of Health Care Finance and Policy is the agency that regulates student health insurance. The proposed new rules are only the first step to make insurers offer more comprehensive student health plans. The director of the Commission commissioned an analysis of how these policies affect students financially and how that would be different if regulators required insurers to provide more generous benefits.
Another recent article published in Inside Higher Ed, found that about 1.7 million college students, or 20 percent, are uninsured in the United States. And among those 1.7 million, they racked up from $120 to $255 million in uncompensated, non injury-related medical care in 2005 — with the characteristics of uninsured students consistent with those of the uninsured more generally.
In a study of student health coverage plans from 340 randomly selected colleges, researchers found that student health plans – offered by 57 percent of all colleges – vary dramatically in terms of services covered, according to a new report on college students and health insurance released by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO). The student health plan premiums range in cost from $30 to $2,400, with some plans excluding or limiting preventative care, prescription drug coverage and other health services. Maximum benefit amounts vary from $2,500 per condition, per year (which won't cover the cost of a hospital stay of any consequence), to $1 million per lifetime.
Probably as a result of this wide discrepancy of prices and coverage, the majority of colleges students receive their health insurance through other people’s policies, such as their parents. And another 67% of students received health insurance through their employers, while 6% were covered through public programs like Medicaid.
According to the GAO report, Massachusetts and New Jersey have laws in place requiring that college students have health insurance (though part-timers are largely exempted).
The American College Health Association (ACHA) recently updated its guidelines on student health insurance. Among these guidelines: “As a condition of enrollment, the college or university requires students to provide evidence that they have adequate health insurance coverage.” Characteristics of “adequate” health insurance identified by the organization include coverage for preventative care, catastrophic illness, and prescription medications, including psychotropic drugs. The ACHA said they want college provided health care plans to be accessible to all students, and affordable.
