It looks like it is possible to fill out a waiver for the school provided health insurance. Does anyone know how much I will be billed if I don’t waive the school’s insurance? We have a good Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. If the school’s insurance fee is costly, I think I will fill out the waiver and try to help my kid find a local physician who takes our insurance. Advice?
IMO, if your insurance offers access in the location where your student will be in school there is no reason to pay for the school-offered plan. BC/BS is national, but your policy has to include national access/access to in-network care if your child will be out of your ‘service’ area (i.e. not just emergency care).
At Vanderbilt, it’s ~$1900 annually. Why pay that if you can access doctors without it?
The student health center on campus provides medical care without extra cost to students whether they have the school provided health insurance or not. My son had to use it last year and they took good care of him. He had more follow-up appointments than he would of had with our home doctor and the only fee we paid was for the prescription drugs he needed. He does have a specialist at the med center and we pay for that with our private health insurance.
It depends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/well/family/do-college-students-need-the-campus-health-plan.html
We have already applied for and received the waiver for our incoming Vandy freshman, after having gone through this process with his older brother at a different university. If you have good private coverage and network doctors in the Nashville area, there is no reason to pay for the Gallagher insurance plan offered by Vanderbilt. The waiver application is easy to fill out. Our family plan does not meet the extremely low deductibles they say they require for waiver eligibility, but we went ahead anyway and they don’t actually check. We received notification of waiver approval within hours of submitting the application.
If your BCBS plan includes the national network, then I would not buy the school plan. He can still use the campus health center for minor stuff. You do want to keep an eye each year on whether the national network is included. Some of the Blues have been pulling back, especially in plans sold on the open market. For instance, starting next year, there are NO national BCBS plans being sold in most of the state of Washington directly to consumers. One of their Blues pulled out of individual plans completely in western Washington, and the other only sells plans with local BCBS doctors included in the network. Employer plans are usually still in the national network, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that trend gained steam,
Also, some colleges (or the companies behind their plans) do check. We got called out on it another colllege, but were still able to get the waiver after confirming that we could cover the higher deductible.
All responses very helpful, thanks!