<p>Okay, anyone have any good places to start to look for a student health insurance plan? Son's (freshman) school requires insurance or they have to take the school's plan which runs $166 a month. Son is currently on our state's children's health insurance plan (TX), I pay for this but not close to $166 a month, but it will not cover him OOS long term, (I double-checked and college is considered long term) so I'm looking for other options. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Wow, $166 is a pretty low cost insurance plan. You can try ehealthinsurance.com, which has low cost plans, but be sure it meets the requirements of the U or he’ll have to buy their plan anyway & then end up with two insurers.</p>
<p>Ehealthinsurance.com only offered one plan for our state & after I spent a very long time filling out the form & waited a long time to hear back, they rejected S because he has asthma (even tho it’s very mild & well-controlled). :(</p>
<p>I bought student insurance for my daughter via her school- it is under the health services area of the college’s website- it sends up being $88/mo for her. It is thru United health care-</p>
<p>here is the link <a href=“http://www.firststudent.com/[/url]”>http://www.firststudent.com/</a></p>
<p>you can scroll down and find insurance for a student-not a specific school-</p>
<p>I am still shocked by rejections due to preexisting conditions, or failure of new insurance to cover preexisting conditions. In our state, this does not happen, and if Obama Care works out, and is not repealed, preexisting conditions won’t be a problem for anyone. I’m not all that political, so this isn’t a political post, just a hopeful one on that particular issue.</p>
<p>Some colleges don’t accept health insurance waiver if there are restrictions on insurance benefits provided by parents/students’ health insurance companies. These restrictions usually include mental health coverage, sport injury coverage, maximum benefit amount, deduction,…</p>
<p>For students using parent’s insurance, have you found it easy or hard for them to get care. My concerns are how does he get to the Dr. The college says they can use the student health center and will be billed. Anyone have knowledge of this. </p>
<p>I guess my question is whether it’s easier/better to go with the college health insurance or have DS stay on our insurance.</p>
<p>Call the school’s health clinic (or someone in student services type dept) to ask how it works at the campus clinic. Our dd is still on our family insurance. She had to go to the campus clinic a few times last year. At her school, every student is only charged a small fee for a clinic visit - even those who have the school health insurance. This fee was less than our family insurance’s co-pay if she had gone off campus, so it was cheaper and easier for her to use the campus clinic even with our own insurance. However, if she had needed greater care, she had a list of in-network providers and facilities nearby and she would have used our insurance there. She didn’t have a car, but someone would have given her a ride.</p>
<p>VAMom-
If your son will be attending an out-of-state school, I suggest that you also call your insurance carrier and find out its policy on paying out-of-network providers in such cases or if it participates in an extended network of providers. Specifically ask if the carrier will consider the student health center as it would a network provider.
My daughter had bloodwork (ordered by our family physician) done at her school’s health center. She was billed for it-it showed up on her student account statement. However, she also requested an itemized statement (date, description, and provider of services and diagnostic code) which we faxed to our insurance company.
I have made it very clear to my daughter that, if she needs acute health care not provided by the student center and is unable to get a ride with a friend, she should take a cab.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advise! I’ll be calling this week. So many loose ends to tie up this month!</p>
<p>Does anyone know if doctors, medical offices refuse to see under 18 students if there are no parental consents? How to provide consents?</p>
<p>Legally, an under 18 year old can already provide consent for life threatening, emergency procedures. You should contact the office you are interested in and explain your situation. You can probably fax a consent over to them.</p>
<p>we used the student health insurance plan because it was about the same cost and gave him a far larger network of services at his out of state college. In addition it covered him well during his west coast internship. Though he did not take up in the opportunity, it gave him international coverage as well.</p>
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<p>D is still on our Blue Cross policy. One of the few good things I can say about BC is that it’s nationwide, so our BC of California policy will cover her if she sees a BC of Indiana provider. She hasn’t needed to use it yet, thank goodness; what minor medical issues she’s had have been handled at the college’s clinic at a very reasonable cost. These get billed to her student account.</p>
<p>Weird, I didn’t worry about transport to a doctor. I figured that the clinic could handle garden-variety ailments, and if it were an emergency, she’d be going to the hospital in an ambulance. For ongoing issues, she sees a doctor back home during breaks.</p>
<p>UHC --which is our group policy holder-- has a nation-wide list of providers. D2 has used our policy both at her regular college campus in NY (some 2000 miles away from her home state) and at various summer internship sites (WA, DC, NY). Before she leaves for any OOS location, or when she needs to see a specialist, I check UHC’s website and give her a list of participating local doctors.</p>
<p>At college, she uses the student health clinic as her primary care provider. The university bills her co-pay to her bursar’s acct and I pay it. There has never been an issue either with UHC or the university over billing.</p>
<p>D1 (at state flagship) also used student health as PCP and had her co-pay billed to her bursar’s acct. Again never had an issue with the university or UHC over it.</p>
<p>D2 has gone off campus to see a specialist a couple of time over the past 3 years. She tells me what kind of specialist she needs, I email her list of providers and she consults with her PCP at student health who will make the referral. In general, the PCPs at student health (at both kiddo’s colleges) have been super cooperative. They do this all the time.</p>
<p>D2 doesn’t have a car so she has used a variety of methods to get to her off campus appts–she’s taken the local city bus, ridden her bike and gotten rides from friends who do have cars at school. (She also now has ZipCar acct and could have reserved a car to drive herself, but she decided she’d rather ride her bike to her most recent appt because the weather was nice and a 20 minutes bike ride isn’t all that far.)</p>
<p>D2 has had one medical emergency at college (dislocated knee). UHC covered the doctor and hospital bills with both billing the insurance carrier directly, but the ambulance transport bill was sent to D2 directly ($800 for 3 blocks!!) since the ambulance company doesn’t deal with insurance companies.</p>
<p>I had this problem last year when my son was going OOS. School required insurance but own small business health insurance was an HMO and only covered emergency services OOS, not regular doctor visits. We ended up with an Aetna policy offered through the school. </p>
<p>I just want to make one observation about school insurance policies, you need to determine the appropriateness not only the out of pocket and deductible but what they will pay per incident. Our son’s Aetna policy is limited to $30,000 per incident, while this sounds like a lot of $$, in some instances this could barely cover a couple of days in the hospital. My son fractured his foot and went to the Hospital ER, between the Dr, , X-rays and a Cat Scan, the bill was around $6000.00.</p>
<p>After speaking to our insurance agent, we have opted to keep this Aetna plan next year and also our HMO coverage through our insurance, if something horrible happens, he can come home for treatment ans still be sufficiently covered.</p>
<p>Hope this helps…</p>
<p>Yes, total coverage is VERY important as things DO happen, even to healthy kids, unfortunately. Our friends had a good HMO plan that covered their kids while in college, so they opted out of student insurance. Their D had a VERY BAD fracture requiring ambulance and emergency surgery and treatment. She was transported to the nearest ER & hospital NOT one covered by their HMO. They ended up with a bill of 5 figures. Since then, he has opted to buy the school health insurance for his other kids, just in case. Turns out it was a good choice as one of his other kids ended up in a cast & crutches while at his U & not sure how close HMO providers were to his accident.</p>
<p>In a way, you’re lucky. We already have a very comprehensive health policy for the family, but my youngest son’s college REQUIRES we buy into the school’s health policy too. Both are Aetna. The problem now is that his school insurance policy is considered his primary, which adds to all sorts of extra paperwork. Fortunately, he wasn’t sick at all, all year. That’s right: two policies for a kid who only went to his doctor one time all year, for his an annual visit.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s not what insurance is for. It’s for the possibility of something catastrophic, but if anything were to happen, his student policy doesn’t cover anything like the comprehensive one we already have for the whole family.</p>
<p>Another issue is that some insurers will not allow a person to have dual coverage under certain circumstances. I just learned this today when speaking with one of several insurance agents trying to help S figure out what coverage to get. He’s fairly healthy as well and only went to the doc once because of a cold. We had him covered under the student policy & then bought an extended policy to cover from when his student policy ended until 1/1/2011 when he was allowed back onto H’s policy. That was his ONE visit or use of his policy. After he got back on H’s policy, we had him go & see all his docs for preventative & maintenance check ups. It is better to be safe than paying a mountain of bills because you THOUGHT you had sufficient coverage & something major occurs.</p>
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<p>We have BCBS and and after calling both them and the school health clinic, this is almost exactly what we figured out would be the case for our S at his school. They charge $10 for an appointment at the health center whether you have their insurance or not. As NeedAVacation said, that’s less than our usual copay anyhow. The biggest challenge is that they will not bill our insurance for services not included in that $10 fee. If he gets blood drawn there or something, he would have to pay (can put it on his bursar account) for the lab fees, and then we’d have to send the bill to our insurance company to get reimbursed. Our insurance said that the labs the school says they use are in network for us, so it’s a hassle, but not an additional expense.</p>
<p>The school still tries to guilt parents into buying the school’s health insurance for the kids because it gives them total privacy, and thus they would be less likely to avoid/delay seeking treatment for an embarrassing problem. But that’s a lot of money for a little extra privacy. (Already the providers are as vague as they can reasonably be on the bills to afford students as much privacy as practical.)</p>
<p>We have opted out of the student insurance after some paperwork. When D gets testing at the Student Health Center, she has to pay up front & then we have to run around trying to get the paperwork completed so she can be reimbursed. It is a hassle but if we persist, we DO get reimbursed. Our insurer does provide very good coverage; the school’s policy looked decent but not enough for us to want to have her have two policies.</p>