What state do you live in and what state for college?
Get your college kid health insurance. My one kid had emergency gall bladder surgery that required two separate procedures and a week in the hospital…her senior year in college. I would not have wanted to pay her bills out of pocket.
Kid also fell in an accident and needed an elbow replacement. Again…so glad we had insurance. That one was HUGE cost.
Like I said…you are healthy until you are not.
I’ve said it numerous times…there are many things I won’t pay for for my kids…but I would scrub floors to make sure they have health insurance…always.
In the context of you question, the $270 increase isn’t really in important figure. The figure that matters is the differential between your coverage with him, and coverage without him - that is what it costs you to insure him for the year. It sounds like you are covered through the Marketplace. Are you getting subsidies? If not, it might be worth looking at plans outside the Marketplace, as those plans may be cheaper (at least that’s what we’ve found locally). If you do stay in the Marketplace, and you are insured with Cigna (or your other option), don’t assume that OOS care will necessarily be out of network. Our insurance is with Health Partners in MN (where corp headquarters is located), which is affiliated with Cigna. We live in CT so use the Cigna network here, and are covered in-network. Your “local” coverage might be more than adequate for your son both at home and at school.
There’s no question about not getting him insurance. It’s just a question of how to do it.
We’re in MO, the school is IU in Bloomington. To re-iterate, we have a grandfathered plan that covers out of network, out of state needs. However, the cost of the plan has just climbed too high at this point. A marketplace plan with subsidy is about $1000 less.
I’m leaning towards getting the Cigna or Ambetter plan with him on it, here in MO, and then using the health center at college for any small needs and fingers crossed we wouldn’t have to bring him back to MO for a larger issue. It’s not like we’ve had any, but I worry a lot.
@sj1970 If he has a major issue I think you would want him at home. So your MO plan would probably be fine.
Except if he has an issue that requires multiple visits, but doesn’t keep him out of college. Like when my kid broke her arm on campus.
Like I said, the health center on campus seems fairly reasonable for an OOP issue like a broken arm.
Read my post 41 again. Medical emergencies CAN and do happen out of state…and sometimes “traveling to the home state” is not an option. It’s just not.
Emergencies are covered OOS and care until stable is covered. Follow up care and therapy will probably not be covered or covered out of network.
I have not read all responses so forgive me if this has been said.
Our insurance allows our children to be “guest members” out of state. In other words they have their own membership number under their out of state address but they are still considered under our plan while at home.
We just had an incident. Child went to ER at school, came home for surgery, then back to school where most of the follow up is. All fine with plan that allowed “guest membership” although we had to pay deductible for both, but we knew that going in.
We are self employed and our insurance is going up close to $300/month next year also. One of our kids goes to school across country and we got him on his University’s insurance. They required that primary care be covered in their state and their policy was much better than ours for the same cost. I have no issues paying his $2400/year student health insurance. As a matter of fact it paid for his wisdom teeth extraction where ours would not even apply it to deductible - so I’m actually coming out ahead so far. IDK if it will help OP, but a $300/month increase is too much for us to take also so I’m looking into the short term plans available through various trade associations we have access to. One is NFIB - if you’re a business owner you can join for about $200/year and a decent short term (1 year) plan through them will be about $800/month less than renewing our ACA plan (we don’t get any subsidies). It doesn’t cover everything that an ACA plan would, but maternity and addictions aren’t needed for us anyhow so I will likely change to the “stripped down” plan.
I checked into the MO chamber of commerce plans, but it’s just me, and you need 2-50 full time employees/people to access them.
“Our insurance allows our children to be “guest members” out of state.” - Interesting. So, they’re covered in both places. We never hit deductibles, but I at least like to benefit from the negotiated rates of in network facilities. How did you inquire about that?
Ok, here’s a question, and I’ll throw this out before I really get into this. Can I have him on the family policy and then purchase something additional like this on the Indiana exchange just for him? https://www.agilehealthinsurance.com/term-health-insurance/plan/slaico-in-plan-2-2500-20-20000-1000000
eta: ok, that’s a no. You can’t have two policies.
^^ Yes, he can have two policies. ONe will be primary and one secondary. My daughter had a school policy and our insurer billed that insurer for a procedure this summer, and then our insurer paid the difference. I only know because I received an EOB from the school policy.
Her school policy was a pretty good deal at about $1200 per year. She even received a $24 refund on the premium a few weeks ago.
@sj1970
Yes. My kids are covered in both places as “guest members”. Check and see if your insurance has that option. As I said our child was recently treated in ER out of state, surgery the following day in state then back to out of state for therapy. They are covering both. He is considered on our plan but he was issued his own card with his own member number which is used in both states.
@sj1970
I just realized you asked how I inquired about that. I called my insurance company and told them I would have a child in school out of state and asked what my options were. They walked me through it.
“Yes, he can have two policies. ONe will be primary and one secondary.”
Huh, ok. The chat on the Indiana marketplace page said you couldn’t.
Are you people of faith? If the school health service is reasonably priced, you could look into a healthshare ministry for essentially help with major medical if needed. Full disclosure, this isn’t a route I’d be willing to go because health shares are not insurance, and they don’t have to follow ACA. We all have pre-existing conditions (even the kids), etc. so it’d be a big old no, but people use them and are happy with them. They’re cheap, but you have to look at them as a way to cover big, unexpected expenses and not think of them as insurance.
FWIW, my youngest’s freshman year, the school had a lot of insurance requirements. Then, the ACA passed and the school stopped offering insurance and told students if they needed it to get it on the exchange.
Along those lines of the health share, perhaps an indemnity plan would help here. I just discovered this while researching. For around $50 a month, you get fixed benefits, and that would sort of play the part of out of state occasional insurance needs. Anyone do that?
https://help.ihealthagents.com/hc/article_attachments/360017720854/UHOne%20Hospital%20Coverage.pdf