The Oregon University System is moving one step closer to requiring its students to carry health insurance beginning next fall.
A proposal will be submitted to the Oregon State Board of Higher Education at its meeting in Portland on Friday. An OUS special task force — created last year to find affordable measures of health coverage — is recommending that a basic insurance plan be mandatory for all of the OUS’s 60,000 students.
“I would love to see mandatory health insurance for all college students,” said Bob Petit, a medical administrator in the University Health Center. “The fact is they are much more at risk for not having it than having it.”
“The goal is not only to have health insurance available, but affordable as well,” OUS spokesman Bob Bruce said.
Elizabeth Dickenson, OUS risk manager, said that some students have expressed concern about the proposal because they already have insurance. By including everyone in the same plan, however, the coverage is cheaper, Dickenson said.
“The plan is to have everyone under the same basic plan,” she said. “Even if you have another carrier … this is better coverage at a lower cost.”
The proposed coverage also works with other insurance carriers that students may have. For example, it can be used to satisfy a deductible, Dickenson said.
Unlike many other insurance plans, OUS’s recommended plan does not include a HMO — health maintenance organization — that limits who a student can receive treatment from.
“Students have a right to choose where they go,” Dickenson said.
Dickenson also said that it’s important to distinguish the basic and extended coverage plans.
“We’re not requiring that students have the extended plan,” Dickenson said.
Because of its lower cost, the proposed plan particularly benefits students who are single parents or working part-time, Bruce said.
The proposal calls for year-round health coverage that also supports out-of-state students.
Historically, Portland State University has been the only OUS campus to require students to be insured. The other campuses have traditionally had voluntary plans, Bruce said.
Changes in health care costs, however, have discouraged students from participating in the voluntary programs. Thus, a smaller risk pool forces insurance carriers to raise the price of premium care, Bruce said.
The OUS proposal deliberately mandates that all students must participate in the basic plan, which creates a risk pool of 60,000 students and decreases the premium costs, Bruce said.
Assuming the plan is approved Friday, the task force’s next job will be to explore an implementation plan, Dickenson said. This includes locating potential insurance carriers and seeking bids this summer. It is the group’s intention to have a contract signed and the plan in place by September.
Before the OUS plan can be installed, the state’s three largest universities must first resolve contracts with insurance carriers.
Dickenson estimates that the mandatory insurance policy would be implemented in fall 2001 on this campus and at Oregon State University and PSU. It would go into effect at Oregon Institute of Technology, Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon, and Western Oregon universities this fall.