<p>My DS is currently insured in our home state of CA. We have an HMO, United Health Care. Our friend switched her entire family's insurance to a more costly PPO. How have other people handled this? Currently, our contribution to the employer provided plan premium is $2600 per year. Insuring our son through Harvard is $2000 a year.</p>
<p>Our daughter is covered under our local Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which also provides prescription coverage under Medco, so we waive Harvard’s Health Insurance: [Waiving</a> Health Insurance Coverage | Harvard University Student Health Program](<a href=“http://hushp.harvard.edu/waive]Waiving”>Waiver Checklist – Harvard University Student Health Program)</p>
<p>If you are in a California HMO, you ought to look carefully at what happens under your plan when someone needs care on the other side of the country, especially non-emergency care. I also think that when you look at the Harvard waiver checklist, there’s a good chance that many HMOs will not qualify.</p>
<p>This has been a constant source of annoyance to me over the past few years. I have gotten my insurance as my wife’s spouse for years, but for the past few years she has been working in a different state, and the health insurance we got was like not having health insurance at all for me. Everything was out of network and involved huge deductibles and co-pays – it was a real disincentive to treat anything not immediately life-threatening. I finally gave up and got my own insurance.</p>
<p>Pardon a brief rant: I understand how the norm for employer-provided health insurance developed in this country, but it’s a really, really stupid system in a world where people change jobs and maybe even change where they live more than once or twice in a lifetime. Or where kids go to college someplace other than home. Maybe it works if your employer is a huge multi-national, or at least national, but that’s not most people.</p>
<p>JHS is right, check carefully re HMO’s. Assumed since we had coverage, we would just be waiving Harvard’s insurance. But when we went through waiver checklist, found out that wife’s school district HMO, which covers the kids, didn’t meet Harvard/Mass. criteria.</p>
<p>OP- If your son is an athlete, does club sports, or ski club, outdoor trips, etc., you may want to consider covering him with the Harvard MA BC/BS policy. We saved a fortune when DD required repeated care by Boston specialists after sports injuries. Our home state insurance would have required huge deductibles.</p>