Deseret News | Reader comments: Students may be required to have health plans

Reader comments
Students may be required to have health plans

Kathy | 7:48 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

I firmly disagree with requiring students to buy health insurance. Students generally have limited income as it is and to require them to pay premiums further burdens them. Students should focus their expenditures on getting the education they need in the shortest amount of time possible. Adding another cost (health insurance) will lengthen the amount of time to become productive tax paying members of the working class. Students are usually in debt when they leave college anyway....the added cost for premiums will only increase the debt load. Let the students choose whether to be insured or not.

Dave | 7:56 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

The idea of forcing students, the majority of which are living below poverty level, to pay into an insurance they don't need in order to pad the insurance co. profits is criminal.

Jan | 8:25 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

I am the mother of 3 college students. When they looked into buying the insurance offered at Southern Utah University, it had a cost of $5000. a year. They could not afford it! Increasing tuition costs make buying health insurance unaffordable. My children work and go to college. College students cannot get on the state funded PCN (Primary Care Network)because they are students. I have heard that BYU has affordable insurance. If the state requires insurance for students it should look into a plan like BYU offers and open PCN to students.

Comments continue below

A former student | 8:36 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

Oh yeah, great idea. Students must be uninsured because they're irresponsible. It couldn't possibly be that they can't afford it.

Forcing students to get health insurance will simply force the students living on the edge to drop our of school.

It would be lovely if students had access to good, inexpensive health insurance, but the idea that making them buy it will magically solve the problem is ridiculous.

Steven | 10:43 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

With the cost of tuition rising at the tune of 10 percent a year, how does anyone expect students to shell out $200-$500 a month extra for health insurance? Even with a job that provides insurance more employers are throwing the insurance burden on to the employees. With higher education getting so expensive I can see in the not too distant future when enrollment will begin to plummet because no one will be able to afford it anymore.

Frank | 11:03 a.m. Dec. 22, 2008

I am all for the mandatory health insurance. Currently it is too expensive but having a mandatory insurance plan for all students will bring that to an affordable level.

I couldnt afford the health insurance at the U, it was too expensive (with reason, less than 20% of students participate).

My cousins go to college in Ogden and contantly try to recruit me due to the "free" insurance they get at their school. I'm guessing its not free but that they pay for it in their tuition costs. They probably dont notice the cost because it would be significantly lower with 100% participation.

Ken | 12:34 p.m. Dec. 22, 2008

I agree with Dave, making these young people pay for insurance they don't need in order to pad/pay the bill of others is absurd.

I was able to opt out of my employers insurance program and instead take home the $800 they would have spent on it. Wouldn't most people do the same if they had a choice?

Employers shouldn't be in the insurance business anyway. It's the result of a failed tax policy.

I'd rather have an HSA (health savings account) but I can't do that with the current laws because I have to have an insurance policy first. So I just pay as I go, and use what I need, and I'm fine with it. Even without tax benefits, it's a lot cheaper than the alternative.

The only way you will bring health care costs under control is to get rid of the $10 copay policies and replace them with $5k deductible ones, so people can be responsible about their use of services and its costs. And provide a policy that covers what I want to have coverage for, not what the feds mandate that the insurance company has to cover.

Back Off | 2:15 p.m. Dec. 22, 2008

Require illegals to carry auto insurance (not to mention health insurance) before you worry about us students carrying health insurance. Back off you overpaid and overweight bullies!

Stacy | 2:33 p.m. Dec. 22, 2008

Many students live in fear that something will happen to them and they won't be able to pay the resulting medical bills. Insurance premiums for private insurance are outrageous, even for young healthy people. If this plan makes insurance coverage possible, then please put it into effect.

Lucas | 3:38 p.m. Dec. 22, 2008

"dilute the insurance pools by adding young, healthy people who pay premiums but who don't tend to seek a lot of medical services."
That translates into - Add healthy people who don't need medical care or prescription drugs. Make them pay a monthly premium for services they will most likely never need. That money will go straight into our pockets for a new vacation home or maybe a new Mercedes.
It's a business, people. Insurance companies are there to make money just like any other business. And this is their latest money-making plan.

Laurels | 6:29 a.m. Dec. 24, 2008

Lucas is correct. One of the underlying motivations for mandating college students have insurance is to add people to the insurance paying pool who are statistically unlikely to need medical care.

Having said that, many friends of my three children who are college students certainly know how to game the system in the area of maternity benefits. Some have purposefully boasted about consciously making the decision not to privately insure themselves because they can qualify for medicaid coverage to pay for maternity care. Once their baby is born, they get private coverage.

To Laurels: | 7:49 a.m. Dec. 24, 2008

The maternity thing was huge at the college I attended. It was so significant that the college, a private institution, implemented a requirement that all students who attend the college had to have private medical insurance.

College students make up a large percentage of the child-bearing population and maternity costs are enormous. This is especially true if there are complications and something is wrong with the baby. If the parents don't have insurance, neither does the baby. Then who foots the bill for the baby's medical costs? And, since the baby is born with the condition and isn't insured at the time, it is a pre-existing condition that will preclude the baby from getting insurance coverage for as he/she grows up.

Given this, I'm not so sure it is a bad idea to require college students to carry medical insurance.

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