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Here's your SCUP Link on How Health Care Plans Fail Students

Bryan A. Liang writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the state of student health care and insurance plans, which are under increasing scrutiny. The Chronicle article is behind password protection, but SCUP members can read his related article from the April–June 2010 issue of Planning for Higher Education here.

Here he explains the practices under examination:

The exclusionary practices and poor quality of college health plans are unfortunately common. A 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office noted that approximately 80 percent of students carry public or private insurance, either through a parent's insurance or on their own. Yet according to College Parents of America, an advocacy group, many colleges reject the use of that outside insurance. The GAO report also found that college-based plans, besides their low ceilings on coverage, also have payment caps on common services, like outpatient care, that further reduce coverage, high out-of-pocket costs, and simply offer little for the money compared with health plans available in the community.

Moreover, other sources besides Cuomo have also found that, beyond rejecting standard insurance and offering limited benefit plans, college plans spend little on, but profit much off, students. Investigative reports by BusinessWeek have indicated that the "medical-loss ratio" for such plans—the percentage of premiums spent on services—should be close to 80 percent, using community business practice and state law as benchmarks. Health-reform legislation also uses that benchmark. Yet college plans spend far less—reportedly as low as 10 percent in some cases.