School health insurance-is it a scam?

[imable24]

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I was on my parent's health insurance until I turned 25. Then I decided to enroll in the school's health insurance. I chose the highest option possible, and I pay an extra $3k a year.

However, this year I needed some extra blood and lab work and I had to pay $350 just for the lab work. So I talked to my parents and my father's employer offers a health insurance plan for "young adults over 25" that are still in school.

So I went to submit a waiver to my school to get off their crappy expensive insurance, and they told me that my waiver will most likely get denied unless I talk to the dean. Basically unless you're Canadian, married, have medicaid, or covered by your parents- you can't buy outside insurance. You have to take the school's plan.

Which made me think-is this some sort of scam? Does the school make profit off their health insurance plan? Do other schools not allow you to buy your own insurance?

 

[njbmd]

Insurance is very school-specific. My school had an excellent plan that was quite low cost for students and was optional. I know of two other schools that were located in the same city that were not so good thus a fair number of their students bought outside insurance for various reasons. In short, you have to do what you have done meaning investigate your options and try to exercise them for what is best for you.

In some cases, you may "luck out" and get something great while in others, you are "stuck" with the school insurance. I am certain that some schools want as many medical students as possible in their plan because they are generally pretty healthy and require few services. I would not use the word "scam" but your schools student insurance might not be a good fit for what you need.

 

[cpants]

In my school you are just required to have health insurance. I went for the school insurance because it is cheap, around 2k/yr. If I found an insurance which suits me better, I would be free to opt out. I just have to prove to the school that I am covered. I am not sure they actually can force you to buy their plan. If so, that really sucks.

 

[Jolie South]

In my school you are just required to have health insurance. I went for the school insurance because it is cheap, around 2k/yr. If I found an insurance which suits me better, I would be free to opt out. I just have to prove to the school that I am covered. I am not sure they actually can force you to buy their plan. If so, that really sucks.

This is what mine costs and the coverage is pretty good. Plus, it's a PPO, which I prefer.

My school said that if you could find the same level of coverage as the school insurance through whatever source be it parent, spouse, whatever that you could do that, but you had to provide proof. I examined a lot of insurance before starting school and there were no other options that were as cheap with the same level of coverage.

 

[finished]

Insurance is getting more and more expensive everywhere. I became ill in medical school with a rare disease and did not apply into residency and so two things that became important were:
1. continuity- if you become seriously ill, can you keep your dad's plan after graduation? Most likely the student health plan will not let you stay on indefinitely, and you may not be elligible for hippa/cobra, etc, since school is not the same as a job. I ended up having to apply into my state's high risk plan and am shelling out almost $600/mo now.
2. what type of coverage is it? HMO vs PPO vs other? I went through medical school undiagnosed and then applied into another academic program at the same school after graduating, in part to keep my insurance. It was a ppo and this allowed me to go out for LOTS of second opinions, which is what it took to finally get my diagnosis. Part of my care involved using the student health center, and let's just say they weren't the sharpest tools in the shed- but the ppo part is what was most helpful. I would NOT have been diagnosed in an HMO!

 

[JeffLebowski]

The answer to your question is Yes and No.

Yes (it's a scam)
-If they don't let you shop around, that's suspect, although school specific
-Bad health insurance sucks, because basically you pay 3k for premiums, and then have an additional large sum of a deductible to pay (say $500-1000+) before the insurance company even starts paying...so you're taking a $4,000 a year gamble that you'll get sick enough to (Yay!) rack up over $1,000 in healthcare expenses. And even then, a lot of plans are "co-insurance", which means even after you pay your premium, and pay your deductible, they'll only cover some percentage of what else you're charged, say 70-90%. So you're stuck with that extra 10-30%. So the only way to come out "ahead" in this whole thing is to:
1) Pay the premium ($3,000)
2) Pay the deductible ($1,000)
....which puts your investment at $4,000. So in order to get your money's worth, that means if your plan is say 90% co-insurance, you'll have to rack up another $5,000 in additional healthcare costs above your deductible, at which point, you'll have paid $4,500 and your insurance company will have paid $4,500. Oh joy! (That's assuming they don't decide arbitrarily to just not cover some of your bills, which happens very frequently.) If you're healthy, you're getting bilked.

No (it's not a scam)
-Since you're part of an insurance plan (and big pool of patients), they are able to give you cheaper, negotiated rates for some stuff, so that helps some.
-If, in the event that you don't have the good fortune of being relatively healthy, and something racking up well over the above mentioned value for health care costs (basically surgery, catastrophic illness, long hospital stays, etc.), you will be bankrupt unless you've got substantial personal finances. There's a reason medical bills are the most common cause of bankruptcy.
-Schools really have to ensure that you'll be healthy enough to continue on in school. It's a huge hassle for them to have students without insurance who crash their credit score into a mountain with some hospital stay, or take out additional 'emergency' student loans to cover it, adding to their cost of attendance, or having to miss exams, miss rotations, or decelerate.

So I don't know. It depends on how you look at it.