Thinking about health insurance at UCLA

Hello,
As my D is seriously considering becoming a Bruin, I was looking into how health insurance works there. Since she’ll still have coverage under my plan I was thinking we’d waive the pricey UC SHIP insurance plan since she can technically still use the on campus health center. Then I found this article.
https://dailybruin.com/2018/10/25/on-campus-health-care-should-be-option-for-all-students-not-just-those-with-uc-ship/

It would be so much easier if the Ashe Student Health Center could just bill our insurance.

Do any current students/parents have any experiences using the Ashe Center and not have UC SHIP? Is it a pain? Reading that 80% of the visits last year were UC SHIP insured makes me think those with outside insurance may not use the on campus health center. If my kid is sick at college I want her to have easy, uncomplicated access to the Health Center and not pay $3K+ if she’s already covered under my work plan.

The Ashe center only takes UCship. I have ppo and just use the UCLA medical center which is almost as close. If you have insurance I would waive ucship. The only thing I used at Ashe was the free flu shot everyone gets. At Ashe you cant make appointments in advance easily either. It’s a same day lottery type thing.

Thanks, @10s4life , for being your usual helpful self. Glad to know the UCLA med center is another option for students using outside insurance. If she ends up there, we’ll make sure my plan PPO plan is covered there.

No problem. The quality of doctors is a lot higher for UC med center too

@10s4life so UC med has like an urgent care, prescriptions?

@gzza73 Depending on your health plan you can choose a pharmacy like cvs. For ex I see a primary care doctor at UCLA medical center. He prescribes something. It gets filled and I pick it up at cvs in Westwood. There is also an urgent care. The UCLA medical system is one of the best in the world

My daughter is a junior and has never had UCShip. She had an ear infection her freshman year and was able to go to Ashe to be seen and prescribed an antibiotic. They charged $12 for the visit plus the cost of the prescription which was something like $7. I don’t know if it’s changed in the last couple of years.

Here is the list of costs for services at Ashe with and without UCShip:

http://www.studenthealth.ucla.edu/Lists/ChannelContent/CustDispForm.aspx?ID=78&Title=Fees%20and%20Eligibility&Channel=Services

We have waived UCShip for all my kids two at UCLA and one at UCB and haven’t had difficulty getting care. My son now in his third year at UCLA tore his MCL during an IM soccer game, and received excellent care at the UCLA Medical Center.

Thanks very much Mom2jl, svlab112 and of course 10s4life. All of this information is super helpful. Checking off “wondering about health insurance @ UCLA” on the things to think about for college list : )

FYI, if you are on financial aid they often pay for SHIP, BUT if you waive it you don’t get to keep the money.

For those who have Kaiser medical insurance, I think the nearest Kaiser emergency care/hospital is the West Los Angeles Medical Center at 6041 Cadillac Drive (next to Venice Blvd., near Culver City). It’s approx. 9 miles from the dorms (i.e., the Hill). Slightly closer is the Kaiser Santa Monica Medical Office (at 1450 10th St. near Santa Monica Blvd.), which has doctors, nurses, pharmacy, and lab. These Kaiser facilities are pretty for to go for medical care if a student were to get sick or injured.

@Interested_Dad I actually have ppo and Kaiser cause of double coverage. I went to kaiser a few times freshman year because of the lower copays. The uber ride was farther than walking but only costed about $15 to travel in peak traffic. It’s not the most convienent but def doable and in reality you don’t really get sick too often to where you need to see the doctors.

10s4life, thank you for sharing your tremendous knowledge and experience about all things UCLA - including trips to Kaiser! Your experience about getting to/from Kaiser will be a factor in our deciding whether to buy UCSHIP for the 2019-2020 school year.

So I want to add on to this discuss what I learned about coverage today.

I have the Blue Shield Trio HMO plan for my family. I was wondering if I should waive out the UCSHIP and have my daughter use our Blue Shield insurance or not.

Turns out the Blue Shield Trio HMO plan is what’s called a restricted plan. My daughter can use it as long as she lives near us. It is setup so that we can use doctors and hospitals in a 100 mile radius of our residence. So it could have worked if we had lived near UCLA, but we are more than 100 miles away. Since we don’t live near Westwood, the doctors and hospitals there are are “out of area” for our Trio HMO plan.

I spoke to both the Health Insurance Specialist department at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center and with Blue Shield of Calfornia. She is not covered under this plan to use Ronald Reagan Medical Center since she would be out of her home area.

The choices then are to get her her own plan with Blue Shield, or just to keep the automatic UCSHIP coverage. Cost of dropping her off my BS plan once she starts school appears to be more of a savings that paying for the UCSHIP plan. So we are going with the UCSHIP plan for now.

If we had a Blue Shield PPO plan (which we have had in past years), then she probably would have been able to stay on that plan and be covered at the UCLA Reagan Medical Center and many other doctors and facilities in the UCLA area.

So the type of plan is critical. That’s what the waiver of the UCSHIP is about. They are looking at your plan to see if it actually is comparable coverage to what UCSHIP offers. In my case, I thought I had coverage for my daughter. Turns out I really didn’t. So I needed a new plan one way or another.

We waived the UCSHIP for my son because we have coverage BUT we did sign up for Bruincare ($60 a quarter) so that he has some access to Ashe.

@Haysmom That’s a common thing people do. Flu shots are free for all students btw

Thanks @Haysmom. I didn’t catch the info about Bruincare when we waived UCSHIP, but I just went in and purchased this. I think about most of my D19’s appointments are for things like a cold that may need antibiotics and more minor things like that so the convenience of Bruincare makes a lot of sense.