My family is self-employed so we buy our health insurance from the marketplace. It is not cheap, but it is good coverage (PPO). Last year I just assumed that it made sense to keep DD on it rather than even look at her college’s offering. I wanted to make sure she would even be able to complete a year of college and I assumed the college plan was bare bones.
She takes two very expensive medications. We pay full freight for them before we meet our deductible and then we still have to pay 50%. We are taking hundreds of dollars a month.
SO I just scanned the college’s site and am reading more about the plan they offer. It is thru United Health Care and I do believe most of the area providers that we like are included. (I want to be able to go to the best hospitals etc if something bad happens).
It looks like even the Tier 3 prescription drug co-pay tops out at $60 which would be awesome. I am having trouble finding her meds in a formulary. The firststudent site will not let me search because I don’t have an account and I don’t want to enroll if these meds are not covered. I found a PDF on the firststudent site for her college and it lists one med but not the other. The one med is a tier 2 which I believe means we would pay $40 instead of $200+++
I will definitely call the firststudent company and see if they can tell me over the phone if this med is covered. But this is all so overwhelming and there is a deadline of 8/28 to enroll! Some thoughts in my head:
What else should I be looking at when considering whether to enroll her in this and drop her from our coverage?
Do plans like this just exclude certain meds altogether and force us to pay the entire cost?
The deductible on this is only $250 and the premiums are much less than I am paying. WHAT’S THE CATCH?
Thank you for anyone with any experience in this area!
Our D at an OOS public U has excellent coverage on her student insurance. Way better than the previous ACA plan we had for her at home. It’s a 12 month plan.
Since the ACA plan we had for her at home would not provide a network OOS, and therefore no coverage unless there was an emergency, we investigated the major health plan offered at her U, and we also investigated ACA plans in that state. We opted for the U’s insurance.
In contrast, our other kid’s in-state public U did NOT have great coverage for students. It was less expensive, but acted more like major medical. We opted for it anyways.
So, in my limited experience, we’ve found plans vary a LOT.
Lastly, although it’s frustrating, I usually call 2x with the same questions with the intention of talking to 2 different reps. Unfortunately, I often get different answers, and then will ask to speak to a supervisor.
You may be able to enroll your student in the insurance, explore the web site thoroughly, ask your questions, then drop it if the coverage is not adequate.
The school is not requiring you to provide proof of health insurance?
@Midwest67 The school is requiring us to buy their insurance or waiver insurance with proof of coverage. Last year we waived it and she stayed on our plan. But now that I see how much more affordable insurance may be with the school’s plan I am crunching the numbers to see what the catch is
I just called their customer service and they looked up her med and we would only have to pay $60 co pay!!! That is AMAZING - I have been paying $500/month!
It looks like the coverage for doctors and hospitals is pretty standard and the out of pocket max is $6850 and then they start covering at 100% for preferred providers.
Our D’s insurance paid for an entire year of contacts for her. I was all WHAAAT?! And she had her wisdom teeth taken out at the U’s dental school. $500. Pinch me!
We have been happy with D’s student insurance. Worked fine at school and at home (1000 miles away). Like you she was already part of our family plan but we took a chance on it. The best part has been her school adds additional money to her financial aid to pay for it!
Often the Us have good deals for student plans—they have leverage because of #s and lots of young healthy students who make few or no claims. Really a good idea to investigate. For us, our family plan was better and cheaper but for many the U plan is a great bargain.
Our family plan costs stays the same no matter how many family members are on it, so it hasn’t made sense for us to use university plans, but I agree they can be good deals. In your case, OP, with the great drop in prescription cost, it seems to be worth it.
My daughter’s school just started the same UHC policy that it sounds like your daughter is able to get. We are beyond thrilled. It’s listed as a gold plan…same deductible you are quoting and same everything else. For us, it’s $3300 for the full year which is about $800 less costly than a very substandard HMO plan she had for 2018.
I read the whole booklet about coverage, and it seems to be at least better than what DD had.
UHC is not my favorite of the major carriers…but I’m wondering if they are marketing this plan to colleges…
The only thing that bothers me is that there doesn’t seem to be coverage for out of network doctors at all. But the network also seems big enough, and DDs doctors and hospitals are on it.
Then again…her HMO covered no out of network docs…and the network was teeny.
The website had you pick your college, so I guess you can look at what other colleges cost.
I am ecstatic about this. Plus I forgot that I had dropped down to a Bronze plan so our doctor and hospitalizations are only covered at 80% until we reach out of pocket. It was basically like buying catastrophic coverage.
Her plan seems to cover everything for pretty much the cost of one month’s expenses on the current insurance. Even if I can’t drop her for the remainder of 2018 I am ahead.
Of course that savings is going right back into tuition, but still!
