Insurance Matters

Last spring, a German student attending a U.S. university might have paid as little as $200 for a school-sponsored plan that satisfied her J-1 visa requirements that she buy medical insurance. The plan may have offered minimal benefits, but for an undergraduate living on a shoestring, it probably seemed like a good deal. “Most of those plans offered very substandard coverage, as students found out, when they submitted claims on their plan,” says Paul Clancy at Boston University.

This spring, the same student may be paying $1,700 or higher, by some estimates, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)—the health insurance reform measure passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Obama in March 2010.

The law’s 900-plus pages make only fleeting reference to domestic and international students, leaving university and college administrators—not to mention insurers, students, and their families—scouring the new law for hints of how things have changed for the 764,495 people who come to the United States each year to pursue higher education, as well as the 273,996 from the United States studying abroad (Open Doors 2012).

While much of the new law’s repercussions remain uncertain, administrators fear there may be at least two: fewer international students willing to attend U.S. institutions because of the cost of mandatory insurance, and many U.S. students heading overseas with insurance that federal law now considers substandard.

“You’ve got international students coming into the U.S. who think of themselves—like most young people—as invulnerable, so they typically buy