My daughter is an incoming freshman in the fall. If she already has health insurance should we waive the Yale Health Coverage or is there an additional benefit to buying it? Thanks!
We waived because we live (relatively) local and there were plenty of doctors in-plan in New Haven (not that she ever needed them). Our daughter got flu shots, stitches, and other miscellaneous things at Yale Health at no charge. You really need to look into the details of your plan for what happens if your kid needs more than the usual bumps and scrapes. We took the small-for-us risk and it worked out fine (she just graduated) but each family is different.
We also waived. A lot would depend on proximity and what your plan covers.
In our case, nothing extraordinary came up that couldn’t wait until the next break. If it had, there were doctors within an Uber or bike ride distance from campus.
We also waived the health insurance for my son (Yale) and daughter (Harvard) without issues.
I do recommend looking into what your health insurance plan covers for out of town expenses. Our plan covered 80% of out of town health care costs with a maximum $1500 out-of-pocket, per-person per-year allowance. This included doctor visits, specialists, surgery, ER etc. So – even with waiving Yale’s Health Insurance – if something bad had happened, it still would have been more cost effective to waive Yale’s health insurance for both semesters and pay the $1500 maximum through our insurance carrier. But, not every carrier/company has the same policies, so check what you are covered for before waiving Yale’s Health Insurance.
One note for you and your daughter and this is from my post last year on the same subject
I waived for my daughter also. Regular care for minor stuff is covered by Yale Health via their tuition. I waived the hospitalization because we have Federal Blue Cross Blue Shield that can be used anywhere. If your insurance coverage is local or cannot be used in New Haven, they are going to require you take out hospitalization. They have to approve your opting out.
My son will be a freshman but we are going to waive the yale insurance too. I was worried about it because our insurance does not include out of network benefits. But, when I called the ins company they said we are eligible for a free guest membership plan in CT. So it’s definitely worth a little investigating to see if your student will already be covered when they are at Yale. I’m happy to save a little $$!
I posted about our complications previously on the Parents’ Thread. In a nutshell, I investigated our insurance before waiving and thought we would not have any issues because our insurance company had a very lengthy list of dermatologists in NH that accepted our insurance, so I waived Yale insurance. The problem was that when my son tried to actually get an appt. none of the doctors were actually accepting new patients, regardless of the insurance. Because he was on a Rx that required a monthly lab test and a monthly dermatologist visit, it turned into a fairly significant problem right as my son was starting college.
He then found a primary care doctor that would prescribe the meds and didn’t require him to do the monthly lab work, which seemed odd to me. When I looked up the doctor I found that he had previously had a misdemeanor conviction related to prescription meds. He ended up going off the meds until we got it all sorted out.
Except for the dermatologist, we’ve had no problems with waiving insurance. I know he found a podiatrist in town with no problems and he went to Yale Health for a couple things.