Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

Eugene Craig III of the student paper The Bulldog Collegian reports.

How ObamaCare is Hurting Bowie State Students

From $54/semester to a proposed $750/semester to a proposed $1900/year to CANCELLED, is the roller-coaster Bowie State University Students have been on for the last couple semesters in the University’s attempt to find a health care insurance plan that falls within the rules and regulations released by Department of Health and Human Services. Students who have not been covered by their parent’s health insurance or did not have some kind of health insurance of their own or through another source traditionally have been able to rely on the health insurance offered by the University.

This is not the case anymore. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Bowie State University has been weighing new options for health insurance to provide to the students. Over the last couple semesters we have received messages that our insurance cost would go up due to the Affordable Care Act and as more specifics developed we were told that our insurance would be $1900 for the entire year. The first campus wide email sent to returning students was an obscure email with no body and simply a pdf document attached detailing that the insurance would more than likely be increasing from $60/ year to $750/semester.

The cause of the major increase listed was Obamacare and the fact that the new rules put out by HHS for colleges and universities required that the plans carry a minimal insurance of $100,000 per sickness and offer “preventative coverage protections and other consumer protections”. This is major and drastic increase over the $54/semester that students have traditionally paid to the university to participate in the university provided health insurance program. The university seriously flirted with moving to the $1900/year plan that would by most standards have been a Cadillac plan. The plan that myself and many others have purchased through the university for the time we have been allotted for $5,000 worth of insurance per sickness.

In full disclosure, I have never had to use this insurance plan as I am currently covered by my parent’s insurance plan, but I do know many students who have used this insurance plan.