A shrinking pool of insured students may force the University of Utah to drop health coverage unless school leaders can fix the ailing system.
Student leaders will vote on one solution this week: to mandate insurance as a prerequisite for attending the university.
Only about 20 percent of the 29,000 U. students carry some form of health insurance, and less than half of those are signed up on the school's insurance program, said Jason Gilman, program manager for the U. office of health promotion. That small pool of applicants means higher rates for students who carry U. insurance and a jeopardized future for school-based insurance, he added.
Requiring students to have at least some form of insurance would likely boost the number of students in the school's coverage pool, infusing it with healthier students and reducing premiums.
"Our health insurance that's offered through the university is spiraling downwards. The plan only attracts the people that actually use it," Gilman said.
The current U. provider, GM Southwest, pays out $1.20 in claims for every $1 that comes in. Next year, the rates could jump as much as 40 percent on top of the $1,123 annual student rate.
If those premiums don't drop, Gilman said the school will likely have to nix the student insurance program within a year, leaving at least the 2,100 students with U. coverage uninsured.
"When we dump them into the community, they're not going to be available to be insured. It just doesn't happen," he said. "The university wants to continue to have health plans, but at the rate we're going that would not be possible."
Other schools like Utah State University are also facing dwindling participation and skyrocketing insurance rates. Some schools — including Salt Lake Community College and Weber State — have already dropped their student plans.
Jim Davis, director of the Student Health Center at USU, said the school is waiting to see if an insurance task force set up by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will develop statewide requirements for student insurance.
Davis said statewide requirements would address the larger issue of uninsured college students more effectively than relying on each school to determine its insurance requirements. He noted that the U. dropped its mandatory insurance policy in 1996 following student complaints.
"I don't think schools will be very successful if they try to do it unilaterally. It's a deterrent to registration. It's a deterrent to enrollment and retention of students," Davis said.
But, Davis added, an informal survey of students at USU revealed most favor an insurance requirement. Only 22 percent of students at USU are insured privately or through the school at a cost of $2,100 a year.
The low number of students who have health insurance needs to be addressed to protect schools from financial liabilities as well as to prevent public health concerns, Davis said.
"(Students) are not immune to illness, even though many of them consider themselves to be absolutely healthy forever," he said. "It's a public health issue because if I'm sick and I can't afford to get health care, I'm going to go to class coughing and sneezing on other students."
The U.'s student Senate will vote on the mandatory insurance proposal Thursday, but the cost to students remains its biggest obstacle, said student body Vice President John Poelman.
Poelman said student leaders are working to create an opt-out clause for students who can prove they can't afford insurance while attending school. That would only be a short-term solution until insurance scholarships could be created, he said.
If students are required to sign up for insurance, the premium would likely go down quickly, Poelman added. Already, bids based on a mandatory insurance requirement for next year have come in 10 percent less than the current cost.
"No one wants to vote students out of college or price them out of college," he said. "It's kind of the tough love sort of thing."
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