For next year I’m thinking of taking my D off my insurance and getting the student insurance offered through her college instead (United Healthcare Choice Plus through Gallagher). I’m trying to think of pros/cons. Once concern I have is what happens when she graduates? She is covered until August, but am I able to then put her on my insurance? Does graduating (and thereby her losing coverage) satisfy the “life event” requirement to be able to add her to my insurance? I figure lots of you have experience with this, so I appreciate your comments! TIA!
The school coverage is year round as long as she is enrolled. Pros include that it’s easier and any visits are probably charged to her school account, which makes it easy for you to track/pay. Cons may include that if there is an on-site student health center, she may have to get preauthorization to see a doctor outside of the center - this gets tricky when she is home for the summer and you aren’t anywhere near the student health center (I know this from experience). We went with the school policy because it was roughly the same cost as having her on our private insurance and the policy was wayyyy better than ours.
The loss of insurance is indeed considered a Qualifying Event - if her school insurance will run out sometime in August of the year she graduates, you will want her back on your insurance probably August 1st so there is no gap in coverage. Your plan will usually have a set amount of time after the Qualifying Event date (her graduation) to get the form submitted (of course, you can submit the form before the event occurs) - again, usually coverage is activated the 1st of the month, so plan accordingly.
These are all things that you should be confirming with your own health insurance carrier and her school policy.
@Undercrackers thanks for the reply! I would have never thought of the issue with preauthorization, and you’re right that she will be far away from school during the summer. I’ll definitely check out this issue.
For everyone else, I’d appreciate hearing about other issues so I can check out whether I’d have the same problem. Thanks!
We did this because we carry our own health insurance and so the deductible is huge. When DS went to school his college requires students to have a policy that provides primary care in that state (ours did not) and offered a student policy. It actually cost a little bit less AND covered his wisdom teeth extraction where ours would not. So it paid for itself the first year,
We opted to leave our daughter on our health plan, mostly because we have better coverage.
One thing to consider is coverage if your child will be doing internships or co-ops away from both school and home. You want a plan that has a wide network.
My health plan did not have any in-network providers in the town where my son goes to school (he would have needed to find a ride to a town 20 minutes away). The school plan has in-network providers in our town at home in case he needs to see someone over breaks.
The school plan is relatively low price and good coverage. A big bonus is that he’s covered by the plan while he studies abroad. I was never able to get a straight answer from my provider about that.
@momofsenior1 Yep, very valid point. My D is doing internships OOS, so I’m crossing my fingers that she won’t need any medical care over the summer (and she will have taken care of anything pressing locally before she takes off). Dealing with medical insurance in general is pain.
Thanks @threebeans and @momofsenior1 . I’ve pulled out the Benefit Analysis on both my plan and the school plan and compared. I’ll have to look up the whole “in network” situation for both plans. Being out of network can be a nasty surprise for unexpected things like hospitals etc. At this point, I’m in the situation where I feel like I don’t even know what I don’t know. Something can look fine on paper, but then when you go to use it you fall within an exception that you didn’t even know about.
We kept our Soph son on our health plan as it was accepted for health visits on campus and had better coverage than the one offered by ASU.
We used the United Healthcare student plan for D18 as it was half the price of her existing plan. We checked first that the primary care doctor and specialists she had seen at home were in network. But so far she hadn’t had occasion to see them during school breaks.
Dig down and get the details for your plan options. Everybody has a different situation. I don’t think I’d be too trusting of end of a student plan as a qualifying event to get back on a parent’s employer-provided plan outside of open enrollment. That sounds very iffy, IMO. I have a student at a B10 school, and its United Healthcare plan touts world-wide coverage, but when you drill down and read the details, it does not actually cover care received outside of the US and named territories. If that isn’t oxymoronic or what? My student is abroad this semester, and the abroad program has a separate health policy for students going abroad. Our school is one of the cheaper schools re premium and policy costs, but we opt out since our insurance is a better deal. That isn’t true for everyone, and our school does reject waiver applications if it deems the student’s coverage to not be adequate, e.g., no local coverage in the college town, a deductible that’s higher than the school’s policy, etc…Also, re school health centers, that varies by school, too. At ours, students pay a health fee, which is for services at the health center, which doesn’t accept ANY insurance. Good luck, it’s a headache.