<p>Anyone have any insight to the AU Meal Plan? MY S seems to want the $2000 one, mainly because he can eat whenever he wants. He isn’t a big eater but likes to smaller meals but more often, which is why that unlimited plan may suit him better. </p>
<p>When does the meal plan have to be paid for? is it paid for in installments, or in full at the beginning of the year? And should my S be opening up an AU student account soon? That’s how he gets the Eagle Bucks? What else does it cover/do? </p>
<p>I can’t help you with deciding on a meal plan. My D had the smallest plan allowed for freshman. She did fine with it, but she doesn’t eat breakfast (other than coffee in her room) and often missed meals because of class and rehearsal schedules. She did use Eagle Bucks for meals outside of the cafeteria and we had to replenish that account. Eagle Bucks are also used for laundry, copying/printing and books. </p>
<p>As far as paying for it, the meal plan costs are added to your tuition bill. You can choose to either pay each semester in full at the beginning of the term, or choose an installment plan (for a small fee). AU will send you info on the installment plan.</p>
<p>Thanks @megpmom. Everyone is so helpful here </p>
<p>The installment plan- is it in the students name, or the parents name? We haven’t had the info from AU yet but I guess it’ll be soon…they made some changes to the financial aid packet and although it’s been pretty much confirmed over the phone, we’re not getting definite confirmation on that until Friday. I just that type that like to have advance notice of what needs paying, and when! </p>
<p>If the meal plan costs are added to the tuition bill, I guess the sooner my S chooses the plan, the better?</p>
<p>Eagle Bucks can also be used at the student health center, which I didn’t realize until my daughter was sending me receipts for reimbursement. It is easy to add Eagle Bucks $$ over the course of the year as you see the spending. You can also look at the expenses and decide if that is something you want to fund, i.e. funding health services, printing and laundry is one thing. Pizza, coffee, smoothies may be at your discretion!</p>
<p>My D also chose the smallest meal plan. By the end of the year her Eagle Bucks was 0 and she had to “survive on swipes” Oh the horror!!</p>
<p>Do you mean that they use Eagle Bucks for paying for medication? Prescriptions? Or for a medical appointment? </p>
<p>I don’t know anything about the medical center yet (is there a page you can point me towards?) - we had been thinking of leaving our S on our health insurance but it has a $20 co-pay and he didn’t like the idea of always having to have a check with him…S also says he thinks all Freshman have to enroll in the AU medical insurance - still have to clarify this, but it may be what he ends up doing. I guess he would stay on ours too, for when he comes home in vacation time. </p>
<p>Thanks for helping me out @bhmomma! Last day of school was yesterday so my ‘Senior’ S is now officially no longer a high school student- it’s a very happy house here! You may have gathered from another post that we moved here from England, where it’s done so differently…hence, so many questions!</p>
<p>All students do not have to enroll in the health plan. You will get information (or your son will) on getting a waiver by providing proof of coverage. I remember my D did not know how or where to look for the plan numbers etc, so I helped her fill it in. My D had a pretty rocky fall health wise (allergies, mono) so she learned to navigate the health center, CVS and even a trip to the ER when she wasn’t getting any better. </p>
<p>I am pretty sure she was able to use the Eagle Bucks for both the office visit and medications rec’d at the health center. We have prescription drug coverage at CVS (which is right in Tenleytown) so I am pretty sure it would have been better for her to pick up meds at CVS but she was feeling rotten and did not feel like riding the shuttle, so it was a nice option. It was not very expensive either. I made sure she had her own medical plan card. I reimbursed her any copays and medication. She used her Eagle Bucks for some and also we also got her a debit card linked to our bank account here so we could get her $$ more easily.<br>
We also have a medical flexible spending account to reimburse us for our out of pocket expenses and after the number of visits and meds she generated her freshman year, I decided to just get her own flex spending card to make copays and buy prescriptions. I printed off the allowable uses and enclosed that with the card I gave her. I also read her the riot act that it could not be used for other things at CVS. She is generally pretty responsible so I am hoping that this is easier than having her send us her receipts so I can get reimbursed.</p>
<p>Just a word of caution to those considering using the AU medical plan instead of keeping a child on their current plan: the prescription drug coverage is very limited. D is on several pricey medications on an ongoing basis. The AU plan has a cap on the annual retail cost of the meds (not the price paid under the plan), and after that cap is reached there’s no drug coverage at all for that year. D hit her max in April and found herself with a $250 prescription bill the next time she refilled. This was my fault–in all the various medical plans I had over the years, I had never encountered this sort of limitation, so I didn’t read the fine print on the drug plan. Even though it would have cost more in premiums to keep her on her old plan, it would have been the smarter choice. Caveat emptor!</p>
<p>This has already happened. There should be email about this at his AU email address. If you plan for him to waive the AU insurance and stay on your family’s plan, he needs to go in through his AU portal to do this.</p>
<p>My daughter and I did this maybe two weeks ago.</p>
<p>@MommaJ and @Sikorsky- thanks for the word of caution! S didn’t get the email you mention above- we’ve just checked his inbox again; but I’m now reading the fine print. We have pretty good medical insurance already with Blue Cross Blue Shield, I’m thinking we’ll keep him on that and he’ll just have a small co-pay. I’ll have to look on the AU health page to make sure the Medical center takes BCBS- I assume they would though. </p>
<p>@bhmomma- what do you mean by a “medical flexible spending account”?</p>
<p>The AU website says that changes have been made to the AU insurance plan for the 2011-2012 policy year. The student health insurance plan will include a $4,000 maximum for prescription drug coverage (as opposed to $2,500 last year.) The exclusion of treatment for pre existing conditions has also been removed.</p>
<p>Still have to compare it to our current plan.</p>
<p>The AU Health Center does not take private insurance. Everyone just pays a small co-pay (I think it’s around $20). If they send you to a specialist (my D had to go to an orthopedist) then you use your private insurance. My D also had an emergency room visit at Sibley Hospital that was covered by our private ins. Prescriptions, if they are filled at CVS, will be covered by private ins.</p>
<p>Re: meal plans. My D had the middle plan freshman year – not the unlimited swipes but the next one down. She’s a healthy breakfast eater so it made sense (it does not make sense if you don’t eat breakfast or only want coffee & toast). You do have a couple of weeks at the beginning of the semester to change your meal plan and they will either bill or credit you for the change. She did not use EagleBucks for outside shopping, etc. Instead she had her own debit card to which we contributed our share of what she got for spending money. There’s no advantage to using EagleBucks over a debit card for things like health center, CVS, etc. You do need EB for laundry.
I did see they’re adding a declining balance plan to EB this year – I haven’t entirely figured that one out.</p>
<p>There is no sense in NOT spending the Eagle Bucks. It is like leaving money on the table! I can see not adding to it - but not ever spending it is just wasting money, IMO.</p>
<p>proudmom44 - we’re like bhmomma in having a flexible health spending account thru my work. Basically I put aside $x from each pay check into the fsa (and I think that is pre-tax, so I save taxes as well). The company that administers the plan gives me a card (like a debit card) for each adult in the family (so I just ordered one for S). Each time we need to pay out of pocket - a copay or prescription or the uncovered portion of a bill - we just swipe the debit card and it takes it out of the moneys I’ve accumulated. If I don’t use it, I lose it, but we’ve always used it all.<br>
As for meal plans, S is starting with the 175 meals. He’s a light breakfast eater so will just eat bagels, donuts or cereal in his room. So we’re looking at lunch and dinner. The 175 plan assures him about 11 swipes per week. So he may have to eat a separate lunch or dinner here or there (we have many friends in the DC area who have offered him the homecooked meal). One caution - I believe they have to swipe their meal card anytime they enter the dining hall; even if they are going in just to talk with friends.</p>
<p>I thought the unlimited plan seemed like the best value (if you work out the price per meal swipe on the other plans you see that the price per swipe goes down the more you get…and unlimited is, of course, impossible to calculate!), and seemed trivially more costly than the next plan down. The folks at the Freshman Day residence life presentation also described it as being good for “snackers” who might like to stop in to the cafeterial more than 3x/day for just a bite. This does describe my daughter, who probably would prefer to eat 6 small meals/day. </p>
<p>However, at the Freshman Day parents’ panel, one couple told us that they’d put their daughter on the unlimited plan and she reported that she was pretty much the only girl on campus with that plan! She said it would just be her and the guys on the athletic teams there in the dining hall all the time. When your friends can’t swipe into the dining hall whenever they want, I guess you are limited to eating with the people who can…who, apparently, are the basketball team.</p>
<p>proudmom44-the medical flexible spending account was described accurately above. It is a benefit some employers offer that is totally funded with our own dollars, but it is taken out of the paycheck pretax so there is some benefit from it. Allowable expenses of all family members are permitted, but only adults may have the debit card. Which in our family is myself, H, and eldest D.</p>
<p>I have a Health Care FSA but there is no debit card feature. We have to mail in copies of bills to get reimbursed. I’ll have to remember to tell my daughter to send us the receipts.</p>
<p>DeskPotato-Before I got my D her own card, she would lag so much sending receipts that I had to prod her that I would not reimburse her, until I rec’d the receipts. I am hoping there is not as much need next year, but she also has the debit card now. (I know she read what the card covers as she called me to ask about some things that do not require a prescription, but are covered if a prescription is provided or in some cases with a letter).</p>
<p>I wish ours had that feature. Anything that runs through our insurance (prescriptions, doctor visits) is automatically submitted by BC/BS to the FSA, but anything out of pocket, we have to submit ourselves. I’m thinking this is unlikely to be a major concern unless my kid is using the health center a lot, though. Everything else would probably run through the insurance, right?</p>
<p>Well, ours did not automatically go the flex spending acct for copays or prescriptions so getting the receipts even for those was a pain. Once I realized they would accept a scanned receipt that help speed things along as that is more her comfort zone than the good ole US mail!<br>
My kid actually did end up having a lot of visits. New allergies (lots of dust in the dorms and in the air conditioning unit in the dorm) and as I said above mono that was not diagnosed until she got herself to the hospital (health service thought it was upper respiratory infection only). We ended up getting an environmental air cleaner for her dorm room, and she learned how to handle some of the navigation of our health care system!!</p>
</p>