Most of these plans cover ER visits, and if you are visiting, will have limited coverage. My understanding is they will not cover you for office visits and the like if you live in a place that is not part of their HMO network.
My D will be going to a small college that does not offer insurance. Her current Blue Cross CareFirst plan only covers emergency room visits out of the area and not hospitalizations. At this point I’m pretty confused about how to proceed. State health exchange? Our home state or where she goes to school?
No, I wont. The family health insurance from my mom’s employer will cover me.
Barbalot, I think the school has to offer a plan in order to receive federal money. If not, the exchanges might not help. She’d need to be a resident of the state from which she buys it (she can become a resident of the new state by getting a driver’s license, registering to vote, etc) but probably won’t qualify for any subsidies, so the policy will be expensive.
Barbalot - You might have to purchase an individual plan for her. It is a financial burden, but the peace of mind might be worth the expense. I don’t know how difficult or easy it would be to change your plan for one with national access, or whether you could try to emancipate your daughter so that she would qualify for an exchange plan. I think you can sign up outside of the regular enrollment period if you have a major change in status; this might qualify.
We have high-deductible (catastrophic) coverage with a HSA because we are self-employed and that’s all we can afford. I don’t think it has much coverage out of the state so we jumped at the opportunity to get DS the University coverage. It’s expensive but our premiums went down with him off the policy (now it’s just DH and me), so that offset some of the cost, and it’s peace of mind in case something happens because the coverage is quit good. Also we get good FA so that helps too.
This would qualify as a ‘change in life event’ but exchange plans are very expensive, several hundred per month. She would not get a subsidy as she probably doesn’t make ~$15k per year, which is 100-140% of poverty level. Below that, in the 26 states that have expanded medicaid, she’s have medicaid (but they look at household income, not individual) and that wouldn’t work at an OOS college anyway.
Lot of misinformation in the thread. Check with Kaiser; they most likely cover your kid at college. We always used our insurance for college kids (in US, Peru & Spain)
Kaiser will cover the child at college to the same extent that it will cover someone traveling. It will be out of network for emergencies, but most HMOs like Kaiser have no out of network coverage for basic care. Many of the California schools will not accept it as acceptable coverage and will require the student to buy a different policy, usually from the school.
Neither of the schools my kids attend required submission of the insurance to be released from the school’s offered insurance. Both just asked if the student had her own coverage, I said yes, and the premium was taken off the bill.
Yes, my daughter joined the school healthcare plan for several reasons. One, after reading the fine print in the school’s literature, I saw that if she received financial aid the school was willing to award her additional grant money to help pay for the school’s healthcare coverage. The school ended up awarding her more grant money to cover 1/2 of the cost. This additional grant money made the school’s healthcare coverage less expensive then my employer’s plan. Secondly, after speaking with my benefits department, I learned that if I keep my daughter on both plans, then the school’s plan would become secondary, which in the end would have cost us more if she had to seek care. Lastly, since she took the school’s plan, most of her visits were fully paid because she went to the on-campus health services center, which turned out to be a win-win for me. Do a little homework, it may benefit you to get the school’s plan. It was a great help in my situation.
We are a California family with Kaiser medical insurance. D1 is a senior at a school in the Boston area. We were indeed required to purchase her school’s health insurance plan, as Kaiser did not meet the MA state requirements for coverage.
She was able to use Kaiser services when she was back in an area where Kaiser has medical centers–very useful if you can schedule appointments during breaks. When she was abroad, if she had needed emergency medical services she would have been covered by Kaiser, including for emergency medical evacuation.
Even with paying $$$ for her MA-compliant health care plan, it was still less expensive for us to double-insure her and have the rest of the family on Kaiser. Your own situation may be different; check on this before your next open enrollment period.
Don’t just rely on my experience–be sure to check with your child’s school to see if Kaiser meets the MA health plan requirements or not.
Both of my kids went to college in the same state (one in Boston) and stayed on our health plan. Now one is in grad school in California and we purchased a plan from the school. It is possible that we should also do that for our D who has just started grad school. That would reduce the costs of our personal insurance.