<p>Hello: My D. will join Tufts this fall. She has health insurance as my dependent. [ Blue Cross-Blue Shield.... it is an okay but not excellent plan].
Would you recommend that we take the student health insurance offered by the college?
Is that in addition to the existing insurance?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>If she already has insurance, she should waive the student health insurance. There is no reason to have both. You still need to pay for student health services. There is no way around that. It’s part of your. “Other fees”.</p>
<p>The insurance offered through the school is OK but not that great. Don’t bother getting it if you have BCBS.</p>
<p>The student health fees is a $700 expense that you can’t avoid, but it does mean that student health services (your basic primary and semi-urgent care) as well as counseling and mental health services are all covered.</p>
<p>I’m curious about what most of you do as well- Tufts insurance if you already have it or not? My d was a freshman last year from San Diego and I waived the Tufts insurance as we have Aetna. But- they don’t take any other insurance at health services but their own. So…emergency occurs at 5:00am our time, she goes to health services, sees doctors, gets EKG, blood work up, urine tests and 2 bags of fluid. Great care, couldn’t have asked for better. They said they would have done other tests if she had Tufts insurance though. She turns out fine, but because she didn’t have pre-approval from her primary doc here, we get bill for above tests and pay for it. Good news is that it was only about $100.00 total. Anyway, wondering if I should pay for Tufts insurance this year in case other emergencies arise and she doesn’t get pre-approval beforehand. What do others do?</p>
<p>My son had a sport injury in the winter. He went to a nearby emergency room. They took X-rays and gave him the CD. Tufts health services then read his X-rays. Overall I think that if you have good insurance it’s not worth paying more for Tufts insurance. I always try to get insurance where you don’t need the pre-approval of your primary. I don’t like to depend on yet another doctor to make a decision for me on who and when I can see a specialist.</p>
<p>There is a community hospital 2 miles away from Tufts that any 911 call will take you to if it is actually serious (or that a friend could easily drive you to). Health services may not run six dozen tests if you want to stop by for a second opinion, but they will do a basic checkup and let you know if you need to go to the doctor or not.</p>
<p>We have BCBS and after looking at what places in the area would take the insurance we ended up signing up for Tufts coverage as well. He’s used it lots - though mostly for vaccinations for overseas trips!</p>
<p>For older son at a different college we used the waiver.</p>
<p>My family is enrolled in Tufts HMO which, to my knowledge, is no longer directly affiliated with the institution. We waived the Tufts insurance and I never had any issues as Tufts HMO is Boston-area, anyways.
I’m in grad school now and also waived the Stanford insurance in favor of Tufts HMO. I had a small issue this spring, though, and had to receive treatment on short notice and it seemed as though Tufts HMO was reluctant to approve it (I went to see a doctor at Stanford Hospital before it was fully approved). If your health insurance is based primarily in another region it may be more convenient to use the school’s insurance. You should weigh the respective costs yourself, though.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for the responses.</p>