New UC SHIP waiver requirements allow more students to opt out
By Rafael Sands
Nov. 25, 2014 2:52 p.m.
The UCLA Ashe Student Health Center announced Monday that more students will be able to opt out of the University of California Student Health Insurance Plan, or UC SHIP, starting in winter quarter.
With easier-to-satisfy waiver requirements, students will be able to waive UC SHIP regardless of what percentage of health costs their current health plan makes them pay. Previously, a student’s medical costs must have been at least 80 percent covered by their personal health insurance plan to be eligible to waive UCLA’s plan.
“There were a lot of students with a 70-30 insurance plan that were forced to buy UC SHIP,” said John Bollard, chief of administrative services at the Ashe Center. This means their insurance only covered 70 percent of their health costs, and students had to cover the other 30 percent on their own.
The new waiver requirements also aim to ease the annual out-of-pocket maximum requirement to opt out of UC SHIP. Before, students had to have an individual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350 to waive the plan, but now a family maximum of $12,700 will also count to satisfy this requirement.
The Ashe Center decided to make these changes after receiving many complaints from parents who had premium insurance plans for their children through their employers, but could not opt out due to the old coinsurance percentage requirement, Bollard said.
“We want this to be easy for people. If they have a good insurance plan, we don’t want to keep them out,” he said.
The center expects a significantly higher number of students to be able to waive UC SHIP because of the change, though it could not predict specific numbers, Bollard said. Currently, about 14,000 students out of the total 42,000 undergraduates and graduates at UCLA opt out of UC SHIP, Bollard said.
The Ashe Center does not expect any negative financial implications to come with more students opting not to buy the UC health plan, Bollard said.
The window for waiving out of the UC SHIP plan in the winter quarter is from Dec.1-20. Students who successfully waived out in fall quarter do not need to reapply.
Compiled by Rafael Sands, Bruin contributor.
