California Universities Dropping Option for Family Health Insurance
Stanford University and UC campuses at Berkeley, Davis and Irvine are among a number of universities that have eliminated family health insurance coverage options for students, pushing some students to seek coverage for family members through Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program, and Healthy Families is its version of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
The universities maintain that costs for the family insurance option were exceeding premiums in part because of low enrollment in the plans.
For example, UC-Berkeley had about 100 families enrolled in its plan before discontinuing the option, and about 110 families at Stanford were enrolled in the family plan when the university discontinued coverage in 2006.
Because students are not considered employees, they and their families are ineligible for coverage under plans that the universities offer to workers.
Many universities -- including UCLA, UC-Santa Cruz and Santa Clara University -- offer students family health insurance coverage at below-market rates, according to the Mercury News (Krieger, San Jose Mercury News, 10/13).
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