The passage of health care reform legislation, which will result in both pros and cons for students, has left ASU students divided.
Most insurance companies have cutoff ages for children to be covered by their parents’ insurance plans, but the new bill will allow young adults to stay on their parents’ plans until age 27.
Chris Comings, a 25-year-old mathematics graduate student said the health care legislation’s passage will benefit him because he currently doesn’t have insurance.
“I was 23 when I was dropped from my parents’ insurance,” he said.
Comings said he likes to spend a lot of his time outdoors, bicycling, rock climbing and backpacking.
While bike riding about five months ago, Comings was hit by a car.
“I wasn’t hurt too badly. I had a lot scrapes, deep bruises, and was in a lot of pain,” he said. “I didn’t go to the doctor because I didn’t have insurance.”
Comings said he still feels pain in his lower back from the accident.
“I only have a part-time job and no health insurance, so it would have been very expensive to go to the doctor,” he said.
Comings said he will soon be able to ride his bike without worry of expensive medical care and is optimistic about the reform, but not all students agree that the reform will bring positive change to college campuses.
Jessica Bolitho, a political science senior and president of College Republicans at ASU, said she opposes the health care resolution.
“I can speak on behalf of conservatives in saying that the Republicans did have bills of their own and suggested amendments to the bill that was passed that were all ignored by the Democrats,” she said.
Conservatives are for health care reform, but not overhaul, Bolitho said.
“Our health care is the best in the world, but we all can acknowledge that it is too expensive,” she said. “Having the federal government try to take over one-sixth of our economy is not the answer.”
Bolitho said the resolution would ultimately harm students.
“If a small business owner has to increase the coverage that he or she provides for their employees, they will have to cut overhead somewhere,” she said. “We, as students, generally work jobs that will be the first to get cut.”
Meggan Dugan, 24, a biology senior, said as a student without health insurance, she’s looking forward to the changes the bill will bring.
“[Health care reform] is really awesome. A lot of people don’t finish college until they’re 23 or 24 and are usually dropped from insurance then,” she said.
Dugan does a lot of fieldwork for ASU, working with rocks and plants, and it’s easy to get hurt, she said.
“Health reform is going to make it a lot easier to go to the doctor,” she said. “Before it was hard for me because it was so expensive.”
Students are currently able to receive health insurance from ASU through Aetna Health Insurance. Ethan Slavin, a spokesperson for Aetna, said the company is working to understand the impact of the legislation in the student health market.
“We will be working over the coming weeks to ensure we have the strategies we need to adjust to potentially new market dynamics,” Slavin said.
Much of what has passed Congress will require adjustments to bring clarity to the new law, he said.
“It is important to remember that most of the legislation will not go into effect until 2014 or later, and we will continue to play an active role in the detailed discussions during the lengthy implementation process,” Slavin said.
James Hodge, a professor of health law and ethics at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said it is hard to predict the outcome of the legislation in the future.
“A lot of times what happens is that students, especially graduate students, are booted off their parents’ plans once they reach the age of 21 or when they graduate from college,” he said, which is the nature of health insurance.
A provision that will go into effect in six months will allow a college student, or person up to the age of 27 to remain on their parents’ insurance, Hodge said.
“[Insurance companies] try to omit people off the plan as soon as possible,” he said. “This will not be tolerated [in the future].”
Marjorie Baldwin, director of Health Management and Policy Department at the W. P. Carey School of Business, said people want three things out of health care: broad access, high quality care and reasonable prices, stressing the pros and cons of the reform.
“This really affects students because sometimes it takes a longer time to get a degree,” she said. “It may take some time to land a secure job with benefits.”
There is a mandate in the bill that says every person has to be insured, Baldwin said, and it’s focused on access and expanding coverage to everyone who needs it.
However, citizens might see longer wait times and more difficulty finding a primary care physician, which might affect quality of care, she said.
“Young people who are healthy and think they are invincible will choose to go without health insurance,” Baldwin said. “There can always be an accident that is unpredicted where you need emergency care.”
With no insurance, emergency care could cost thousands of dollars, she said.
“Fifteen percent of Americans don’t have health insurance because they can’t afford it,” Baldwin said.
Reach the reporter at mmbarke1@asu.edu
