January 15, 2012


Our guest asks:

I am a grad student at UPenn. I am a 22 years old female. I am pretty healthy and don't have any significant health history. I am looking for an alternative (cheaper) health insurance plan for Penn Student Insurance Plan (PSIP), which is $1900 for 8 month. I found your information from freedom benefits universal health insurance blog. I am wondering have you helped UPenn students with their insurance before or have any plan that will meet the criteria? According to UPenn, the alternative plan must meet the following criteria:

(criteria omitted)

Please let me know if you have any suggestion. I would really appreciate your help.

 

OnlineAdviser responds:

Prior to this year there were suitable health insurance alternatives listed on the public and private insurance exchanges that were commonly used by international and U.S. resident Penn students. This past year Penn changed the insurance requirement rules so that none of the student insurance plans available in the U.S. (except the policy sold by the school’s insurance agency) meet these new requirements. As a result, these students experienced a sharp increase in their insurance costs for the 2011-2012 school year. The average price of student insurance at other U.S. colleges is about $900, according to UnitedHealthcare and Aetna, two of the country's leading providers of this type of insurance.

Some Penn students and state legislators have complained and questioned whether Penn should be able to establish insurance requirements that cause student plans to be priced, on average, at more than twice the amount of other student insurance plans in other universities. If you share those concerns, we suggest that you contact the University Board of Trustees and the Pennsylvania Insurance Department. Contact information is available on the Pennsylvania insurance page at www.freedombenefits.net .

We believe that eventually Pennsylvania will pass legislation that prohibits a private university from enforcing insurance requirements that exceed the standards of other state residents but until then, we can offer no other suggestions to save on insurance expense.

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