Could Obamacare hurt college students getting healthcare?

[Go Skins]

Quote:
According to President Obama, "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what." You can keep your plan, that is, if your employer doesn't decide to dump it in the wake of Obamacare's passage (as many major employers are already considering doing), if you aren't one of the estimated 51 percent of American workers (66 percent of workers in small businesses) – according to the administration’s own figures – whose plans would have to be changed or dropped under Obamacare, and if you don't have a Medicare Advantage plan or a consumer-driven (high-deductible, low-premium) plan. Now it appears that another type of plan might well be on the chopping block: college students' health plans.

According to MSNBC, "An Aug. 12 letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from the American Council on Education [ACE] and signed by 12 other trade associations representing colleges" says that Obamacare could keep colleges from offering (in the words of the ACE letter) the sort of "low-cost, high-quality student health plans" that "currently provide health coverage to more than 4.5 million college students nationwide."

So Obamacare would require insurers to cover 25-year-old "children" on their parents' plans -- resulting in higher premiums -- while it might simultaneously ban colleges from offering 18-to-22-year-olds low-cost policies of their own.


Quote:
ACE's letter reads, "We are concerned the application of several provisions under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), including certain insurance market reforms and the individual mandate, could make it impossible for colleges and universities to continue to offer student health plans." Highlighting the unseemly new era of politicized, lawyer- and lobbyist-driven health care that Obamacare would spawn, it then asks Secretary Sebelius to grant a favorable regulatory ruling, explaining that the statute is so vague that the matter is now in her hands:

[Obamacare] does not use consistent language with respect to the application of the reforms. Instead, the act uses interchangeably the terms 'health insurance coverage' and 'insurance market.' This distinction does not appear to have any policy basis but nonetheless is causing confusion in the SHP [Student Health Plans] market, particularly with respect to the application of PHSA [the Public Health Service Act] §§2701 (premium variation), 2702 (guaranteed availability), and 2703 (guaranteed renewability) as created by [Obamacare].

Clear as mud?

The letter explains that "The application of these provisions to limited duration SHPs would prohibit colleges and universities from providing coverage only to their student population (rather than the whole individual market) and from doing so on a cost-effective basis via campus-wide (group-like) rating."

After weighing the lobbying efforts of both sides, Sebelius will eventually render her verdict. There's nothing like democracy in motion.

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-might-kill-college-students-health-plans

[sois]

Obama, just give everyone free everything, that will solve it all. Then you can install all your beloved muslim-y mosques all over town and nobody could say anything.

Love, sois

[MichaelWeston]

[quote name='Go Skins' timestamp='1282836380' post='910334']
Quote:
According to President Obama, "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what." You can keep your plan, that is, if your employer doesn't decide to dump it in the wake of Obamacare's passage (as many major employers are already considering doing), if you aren't one of the estimated 51 percent of American workers (66 percent of workers in small businesses) – according to the administration’s own figures – whose plans would have to be changed or dropped under Obamacare, and if you don't have a Medicare Advantage plan or a consumer-driven (high-deductible, low-premium) plan. Now it appears that another type of plan might well be on the chopping block: college students' health plans.

According to MSNBC, "An Aug. 12 letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from the American Council on Education [ACE] and signed by 12 other trade associations representing colleges" says that Obamacare could keep colleges from offering (in the words of the ACE letter) the sort of "low-cost, high-quality student health plans" that "currently provide health coverage to more than 4.5 million college students nationwide."

So Obamacare would require insurers to cover 25-year-old "children" on their parents' plans -- resulting in higher premiums -- while it might simultaneously ban colleges from offering 18-to-22-year-olds low-cost policies of their own.


Quote:
ACE's letter reads, "We are concerned the application of several provisions under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), including certain insurance market reforms and the individual mandate, could make it impossible for colleges and universities to continue to offer student health plans." Highlighting the unseemly new era of politicized, lawyer- and lobbyist-driven health care that Obamacare would spawn, it then asks Secretary Sebelius to grant a favorable regulatory ruling, explaining that the statute is so vague that the matter is now in her hands:

[Obamacare] does not use consistent language with respect to the application of the reforms. Instead, the act uses interchangeably the terms 'health insurance coverage' and 'insurance market.' This distinction does not appear to have any policy basis but nonetheless is causing confusion in the SHP [Student Health Plans] market, particularly with respect to the application of PHSA [the Public Health Service Act] §§2701 (premium variation), 2702 (guaranteed availability), and 2703 (guaranteed renewability) as created by [Obamacare].

Clear as mud?

The letter explains that "The application of these provisions to limited duration SHPs would prohibit colleges and universities from providing coverage only to their student population (rather than the whole individual market) and from doing so on a cost-effective basis via campus-wide (group-like) rating."

After weighing the lobbying efforts of both sides, Sebelius will eventually render her verdict. There's nothing like democracy in motion.

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-might-kill-college-students-health-plans
[/quote]

So wait...I guess the answer is no because they are covered by their parents or can buy into the universal plan?

[|RayDoggBengal|]

[quote name='sois' timestamp='1282842191' post='910357']
Obama, just give everyone free everything, that will solve it all. Then you can install all your beloved muslim-y mosques all over town and nobody could say anything.

Love, sois
[/quote]

And what exactly is wrong with being Muslim or going to a Mosque?

[sois]

[quote name='RayDoggBengal' timestamp='1282853522' post='910402']
And what exactly is wrong with being Muslim or going to a Mosque?
[/quote]

Nothing, it's awesome to be Muslim.