<p>If your student is already covered by parents health insurance benefits is there any reason to buy the plans ( BC/BS etc.) offered by their colleges/universities? H is active duty military - benefits are good - although difficult to deal with sometime. D2 will be student athlete and her school is pushing the BC/BS. What is your experience? Thanks.</p>
<p>We bought the extended insurance last year and, unfortunately, S#1 had to make use of it. It covered <em>everything</em>, far more than our family insurance would have covered and with zero hassle and no forms to fill out. (We're on the complete opposite coast from his school, which would make logistics of arranging coverage kind of nightmare-ish.) For us, it was worth the price. If your D is an athlete, you may want to look into the details carefully in case of a sports injury. It is, however, <em>insurance</em>, meaning that you have to pay even if you don't use its benefits, so I'd also recommend a close look at affordability.</p>
<p>I bought the international health insurance plan the college offered for my son but kept the local one I have. I did so since he had health issues when he left that were attached to mine and included visiting nearby countries for health services. I will let it go for this next year and just keep the stateside one.</p>
<p>At USC, they strongly recommended checking your current insurance vs. the coverage the school plan offers, especially regarding coverage of prescription drugs, etc. Some insurance plans don't cover as much as you expect, which as was posted above can be a nightmare & very costly if your child needs medical care during the school year. School policies tend to be pretty inexpensive & provide good coverage, but check the policies involved to make an informed choice.</p>
<p>My H is AD also and my D is going to be competing in an intercollegiate sport (Div III level). We are NOT buying college insurance. Talk to your Tricare provider. You may want to switch her to Standard if there aren't a lot of Prime providers in the area. Do you have a Tricare supplement? Your provider can also give you a list of the supplemental groups as well. We use MOAA.</p>
<p>We have excellent family health insurance. With DS who is one state away...we waived the school plan in deference to the one we have. There are in network providers where he goes to college if needed. No hassles as it is a neighboring state. DD, however, is going to college on the opposite coast. There are no in network providers in CA for our CT insurance plan. I will can Anthem to find out what the drill is....but my guess is that we will take the school plan. However, if Anthem (my insurer) tells me that cross country coverage is NOT a problem (I'm going to be asking about things like emergency room, and hospitalization...we know they will cover prescriptions...and she can see docs in the health center for minor things) we will waive the school plan there too.</p>
<p>Check to make sure your family's health insurance will cover your child who is away at college and to find out what his/her benefits will be. Many plans, especially HMO plans, will not cover anything except emergencies outside the local region. That means, if your child is attending a school outside the coverage region of the HMO, s/he may not be eligible for routine or follow-up care, prescriptions, diagnostic tests, etc. Or your child may be required to switch to a PCP in the college area in order to be eligible for services. My strong recommendation is that you check with both the school health center (they are often very familiar with different health insurance policies and what they will cover) as well as your insurer for the specifics so there are no unpleasant surprises.</p>
<p>wow, insurance, something I actually know about. If you are military the logistics aren't going to matter since it's countrywide. I would assume you have tricare? and you are absolutely right, a nightmarish system to navigate, especially as a hospital case manager trying to get benefits for a patient. what I would do would be make sure you find a hospital and physician who take tricare where your child is going to college. And a pharmacy if medications are needed. If you do look into the insurance the school offers, MAKE SURE you look at the plan closely and see what it covers.
Do you know that some of these plans max out at $2500 if your child has to go to the hospital for say an appendicitis? $2500 doesn't cover the ER costs, let alone a surgery, medications etc. Some plans are even worse, but because it's BC/BS people think it's good. BC/BS is different in every state you are in, and has a bazillion different plans. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten screamed at by patients because they have no benefits for rehab, some medications, their insurance already maxed out and they still have a long way to go, etc. All I usually have to say is why didn't you read your health insurance plan when you got it, instead of now having to be responsible for thousands of dollars of healthcare costs. be pro-active is all I can say.</p>
<p>Does the student health insurance cover the summer months that school is not in session and kid is not a student?</p>
<p>We waived the school's insurance for my 1st D and will waive again for my 2nd D. My insurance coverage (Blue Cross PPO) is good and more flexible than theirs and is accepted at numerous hospitals/clinics on and adjacent to the campuses. The schools (UCSD, UCLA) require certain minimum coverages so they won't let you opt out with just any plan. I saw no benefit whatsoever to buying their insurance in my circumstance. Other people's insurance plans and circumstances might indicate to purchase the school's insurance. It should be relatively simple to just check out your plan's benefits and accessibility near the college and compare it to the school-offered one and make an informed decision. There's no point in buying redundant coverage. If there was, you'd probably already have it now.</p>
<p>We have Blue Cross PPO and if our D had stayed in CA, we would have opted out of the insurance. But having her cross country...we were less sure. We bought the school insurance.</p>
<p>I can offer another perspective. What to do depends on your own plan, and its terms for out of area coverage. Most health plans, except traditional indemnity plans (a dying breed), have a coverage area. Outside that coverage area, it can be difficult to have care approved for anything other than emergency care. </p>
<p>When my D headed off to college, we changed from an HMO plan to a PPO plan, in order to have more choice. After all, the HMO did not cover a state 900 miles away. When my D needed care that spring, we found the true circumstances were complex. While we had a plan that allowed choice, it had to be within the coverage area OR a complex referral process kicked in. </p>
<p>I spent many hours on the phone with the insurance carrier, her home primary care physician and her student health clinic. It was a bizarre mess, as every care need was ultimately approved and paid for as in network care, but with so much confusion etc. And the downside risk was high, as any mistakes could have cost us hundreds to thousands out of pocket.</p>
<p>The worst of this is that some of the policy problems I ran into were not well described in the materials I had on file.</p>
<p>My advice:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Call your insurer to find out how they handle care needs of college students in the town your kid will be. Specifically ask about care outside the plan service area, if the town is.</p></li>
<li><p>Ask the insurer about the approval process for out of area coveage.</p></li>
<li><p>Take down the name and number of each person you speak with.</p></li>
<li><p>Read the fine print of any school offered policy. Be aware that terms like "reasonable and customary" mean you could be on the hook for a lot of $. Any $ limit for policy payments are a big warning flag. Call a policy service number for clarification of anything you do not understand.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Because of the cost of health care, where even relatively minor things can cost thousands, this is not an area, IMHO, to make any assumptions. If you assume wrong, you could lose big time. Just consider the cost of one bad ankle sprain: a few hundred for the ER. x-rays at maybe $200. Dr. Consult time. PT. etc. Or, worse, consider an ER visit because of too much alcohol, shudder...</p>
<p>exactly newmass dad. ALWAYS keep a log of date, time and person you spoke with, full name. this is what we do in case management, and when insurance companies deny claims because we didn't notify, we get out our log. and just because they say they will cover your child thousands of miles away, as dad said, don't think it will be easy. blue cross and blue shield typically are OK, since they just bill through their local BC/BS, BUT some of them do require you to stay within their boundaries, such as empire blue cross in new york, a very difficult company to deal with. you need specifics and you need them written down and explained. the original poster has a government policy, which transverses the united states, so they won't have this problem. but they will have to find providers that accept it, I don't know if everybody accepts tricare. I would think they should, but that's a different story. but for people with local plans, and I mean local like we have in northeastern PA that only cover one very small region, you could have problems and need to purchase the colleges insurance.</p>
<p>AH!!!!!!!! What a tangled web of menu options! I hate playing the numbers game with a computer voice. Living in one region, going to school in another region. Traveling back and forth between regions!! This is VERY complicated stuff. Thank you all for your suggestions. After hours on the phone this morning, I THINK I have some answers. We are Tricare Standard. So long as we notify the North region when D2 will be in residing in the North region, we have great coverage. I did many searches this morning. There are pharmacies very close. D2 will attending the University of Rochester.Competing in DIII sports. Strong Memorial on campus will bill anybody, Tricare will pay. The list of % covered and out pocket expenses is tricky. If I learned anything this morning is that we must have D2 sign an Authorization to Disclose form. As you all know, when our kids turn the magic age of 18 the privacy acts kick in - we parents become powerless to handle many of these issues. Without these forms, one for each region, Tricare can give me NO information about any claim that D2 would file. My daughter is not prepared to deal with the insurance company. She is covered as long as she is a full time student till she turns 23. I respect the privacy of her medical records.
Ellemenope- The info that I have from UR regarding the BCBS speaks specifically to the "school year", so the students are NOT covered over the summer.
Motherdear- Have you heard of the Authorization to Disclose Information form??</p>
<p>Yea, our insurer send us an authorization form that son signed (he's 18 1/2) & we'll get him to authorize us to see his college info & med records on-line, so we can pay his bills & have access to his med bills, etc. It is worthwhile tracking all of this down so there are no nasty surprises during the school year.</p>