Health care changes might not greatly affect students until they graduate

Local policy experts say a new plan to overhaul the United States’ health care system will… Local policy experts say a new plan to overhaul the United States’ health care system will probably have little effect on students until they graduate.

After nearly four months of floor debate, H.R. 3962, or the Affordable Health Care for America Act, squeaked by the House with a narrow 220-215 vote on Saturday, sending the bill to the Senate and kicking potential health insurance reform into action.

Among the bill’s largest proposals is the requirement for all Americans to purchase health insurance — a provision which could leave young people hurting for coverage.

“When this mandate of ‘everyone must buy insurance’ hits, then people who just recently graduated … will be required to purchase insurance, even if you don’t have a job,” said Beaufort Longest, director of Pitt’s Health Policy Institute at the graduate school of public health. “It’s tough.”

Young people historically account for the highest percentage of uninsured Americans. According to The New York Times, 30 percent of people ages 19-24 did not have health insurance in 2007, while 26 percent of Americans aged 25-34 were uninsured.

Because this age group includes recent graduates — who tend to not have high incomes, let alone stable jobs — the effect of the government-mandated insurance would have a disproportionate impact on young people, Longest said.

But while the proposed legislation would force new graduates to purchase insurance, the bill as written would have a minimal impact on students.

“Students, while they are students, won’t be particularly affected,” Longest said, adding that the bill could actually increase student access to health care options.

The passed House bill includes a provision that would allow students to remain on their parents’ health care insurance plans until age 26, thereby extending the age of coverage. A similar version of the bill proposed in the Senate would extend dependency coverage to age 27.

Currently, UPMC offers student health insurance options to Pitt students whose parents’ insurance plans do not provide dependency coverage.

The plans — which are offered exclusively to full-time Pitt students — allow students coverage for “extensive medical treatment or emergency care” that is not covered by the Pitt Student Health Fee, according to the UPMC website.

The annual premiums for the 2009-10 academic year cost $1,318.32 for full-time Pitt students, and the plan allows access to both UPMC physicians and out-of-network providers.

UPMC spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said he isn’t sure how the proposed Congressional legislation would affect student health care plans.

“It is certainly too early to know exactly what will happen with health care reform, and we would not want to speculate about what it eventually will look like,” he said in an e-mail.

Nevertheless, Nelson said that UPMC supports insurance reform measures that would increase quality health care access to Pitt students.

Because the final impact of the legislation is unknown, he said, students should follow the bill as it moves to the Senate.

“It is in the best interest of college students, and all Americans, to follow the health care debate and determine how it will affect them in the years ahead,” he said.

The University provides its own insurance options to its employees, covering roughly 11,000 — or 90 percent — of its employees, according to the University Times.

Under the insurance plan, children of University employees are also eligible for health plan coverage, excluding vision and dental care.

But while Congress’ health care legislation is pending, a new Pennsylvania law — known as Act 4 — allows people to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 30.

Gov. Ed Rendell said in a statement this summer that this legislation provides “the answer to the prayers of parents whose kids will be graduating from college and will be kicked off their health insurance policies because they’ve reached the maximum age.”

Jeanne Stoner, Pitt’s assistant vice chancellor of federal government relations, said that if the health care reform bill passes the Senate, it will have little impact on the University’s insurance plans.

“Under the terms of H.R. 3962, individual health insurance, whether purchased separately by an individual or provided by an employer, would remain the same, as long as the plans are compliant with whatever requirements would be in the federal health care reform bill,” she said in an e-mail statement.

The ultimate affect of the House legislation is unknown, since the bill still “is NOT final,” she stressed.

Even with the passage of the House’s $1.1 trillion, 10-year health care plan, the legislation is still pending.

Both the Senate’s Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees passed similar versions of the health care bill, and the next step in the legislative process is for the two to be blended into single bill.

If approved by both committees, this compromise bill would go to the Senate floor for a vote. If passed, the bill would then go to a conference committee, where a group of representatives and senators would work to reconcile the House and Senate bill into one piece of legislation.

The reconciled bill would be presented to both the House and Senate for a majority vote and, if passed, would go to President Barack Obama for signature into law.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that the bill should be finished by Christmas, although Senate floor debates have yet to be scheduled, The New York Times reported.

Despite the tight time frame, Longest said he is optimistic of the bill’s passage in the Senate.

“It’s likely that something will come out of the Senate, and it will be similar, but not necessarily the same, as what comes out of the House,” he said. “[The bill reconciliation process] allows for many views and opinions to come into play, and that’s what’s being worked out now.”

In addition to insurance reform, the bill calls for health care measures that would extend coverage and decrease health care costs.

The House bill includes proposed cuts to the Medicare program, which could generate a $500 billion government savings over the bill’s 10-year implementation.

It offers the much-debated “public option” of purchasing government-sponsored health insurance, and it would also eliminate insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions — such as chronic illness — to provide wider access to health care coverage.

While some provisions of the bill are known, Longest said it’s not so simple.

“Well, it’s 2,000 pages, so there’s a lot of other provisions, and [it’s] probably impossible to say what they all are,” he said.

While it might be difficult for Senate Democrats to form a cohesive voting bloc with their members’ varied opinions of the bill, Longest said he remains optimistic.

“I think the bill would pass — I do,” he said. “We’ve got to get health care costs more under control, and everyone is now starting to recognize this.”