Syracuse University officials are reflecting on the first steps of implementing the new health insurance policy after last week’s deadline for students to waive the new plan passed.

In May, SU introduced the online waiver process for students to submit proof of health insurance that was compliant with the Affordable Care Act. The coverage, which began on Aug. 1, had to be U.S.-based and include coverage in the Syracuse area.

The students who had to either waive or accept SU’s health insurance plan for the 2015-16 academic year were all incoming, newly enrolled full-time students, including all full-time newly enrolled international students and all graduate students. Now that the waiver deadline has passed, administrators are able to assess how the process might work in the future.

All full-time new and returning students will be subject to the same process for the 2016-17 academic year.

If students did not have health insurance, they were charged $1,890 for the new student health insurance plan, provided by the university through Aetna Student Health. The cost is $2,742 for those who voluntarily purchase the plan when they already have a health insurance plan.

Aetna Student Health is a full-service insurance broker and administrator that provides competitively priced health insurance programs for college and university students, according to the Aetna Student Health website.

Student Association President Aysha Seedat said SA plans to figure out why the health insurance plan is better for some people and not for others. She added that SA is planning to partner with health services to create an easy, quick guide for students to help them understand the new plan.

“I know the university is really trying to move toward encouraging healthy living,” Seedat said. “I think (the plan) is really moving them in the right direction in terms of encouraging students to be more cognizant about those things.”

Can Aslan, president of the Graduate Student Organization, has been involved with the new health insurance plan since May and sat on three health insurance committees over the summer.

He said that while services offered to students under the new health insurance plan sounded good to him and other students, the plan is expensive.

“International students reached out to (GSO) about the concern of an increase of cost of attendance because all international students were subject to the plan this year,” Aslan said. “This was brought up to administration.”

In response to the feedback, the Bursar’s Office created a payment plan available for students.

Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz, senior vice president and dean of student affairs, said SU would seek feedback from students throughout the semester to determine whether there are components of the waiver process that could be improved.

Patricia Burak, director of the Slutzker Center for International Services, said in an email that the new policy “provides international students with more comprehensive coverage, including pre-existing conditions.”

If students were under a health insurance plan written in another country that did not provide coverage for care, which the U.S. medical system considered necessary, students were previously left with large medical bills, Burak said.

She added that some of the returning students were unaware that a charge would be added to their bill in August if they did not successfully waive by the deadline, and they experienced some confusion with the criteria for successfully waiving.

Burak posted on the Slutzker Center’s Facebook page on Sept. 7 to provide clarification about the new policy.

“Adjusting to this new requirement created a learning curve for some of our returning students who had purchased other policies which had been acceptable for Slutkzer Center’s requirement in the past, but these did not provide ACA compliant, comparable coverage,” Burak said.

Published on September 15, 2015 at 11:03 pm

Contact Katelyn: kmfaubel@syr.edu