Guaranteed Issue Plans — Guaranteed Issue Plans, Coverage & Quotes
Student health insurance is important, especially if you have a pre-existing condition. Many college and university students have current or past illnesses that can prevent them from finding cheap student health insurance. Regardless of your age, you may have a chronic condition like high blood pressure or diabetes. What if you’re pregnant right now? Most college student health insurance won’t cover that. Health insurance for students may not cover anyone who is battling or has battled any type of cancer, or those who have had a heart attack or stroke.
Why shouldn’t you take your chances and apply for every student health insurance plan there is? You’d think one would accept you, but unfortunately, that often isn’t the case. Being rejected for students’ health insurance from one company makes other non-guaranteed issue health insurance plans more likely to reject you a well.
Guaranteed issue health insurance helps you avoid these circumstances. A guaranteed issue plan is a type of student health insurance required to provide all applicants with coverage. That means that regardless of your health status, this college student health insurance will approve you. All group health plans are guaranteed issue, but such health coverage is often unavailable to college students. Even if you’re working while going to school, most college students are either interns, working part-time jobs, or employees at small upstart companies. You may even be freelancing or considering starting your own business in your spare time. Very few of these circumstances offer the cheapest student health insurance.
Cost-sharing among a large employer-sponsored group isn’t possible when buying student health insurance, because many health insurance companies are for-profit. Therefore, you are less likely to be approved by their underwriters. If you are unable to find quality college students health insurance, you can turn to a guaranteed issue health insurance plan.
In some states, all student health insurance plans sold are guaranteed-issue. In all states, you have guarantee issue health insurance options. Guaranteed issue usually cover hospitalization and regular doctor visits, and in addition both inpatient and outpatient health care. Prescription drugs are also covered in some of these plans. Guaranteed issue health insurance is slightly less affordable student health insurance than standard managed care plans. Health insurance companies need to earn their shareholders profit somehow, so they raise premiums for those individuals they consider highly likely to file a greater number of expensive claims. Another pitfall of guaranteed issue health insurance policies is the fact that many of them force you to wait a year before your pre-existing condition(s) are covered. While this is preferable to insurers refusing to cover them altogether, this can result in financial and medical hardship.
Ideally, you should buy student health insurance while you are still healthy to ensure coverage in case you fall ill. That way, you can get cheap student health insurance now, instead of waiting for guaranteed issue health insurance when you need it the most. Health insurance companies understandably want to discourage students from waiting to buy health insurance until they are in bad health. However, a guaranteed issue plan is sometimes necessary. Bad things happen to everybody.
At VitalOne, our licensed student health insurance agents can help you choose the best student health insurance plan for you. The plans we offer use Multiplan, which is the nation’s largest PPO network. If you live in the dorms, you’ll be able to find providers in both your college town and your hometown! What’s more, you’ll be able to save money on your visits!
