A new health insurance website, launched through UF Health Shands Hospital, has been formed to help newly admitted students and their families purchase or prove their health insurance.
Mary Kay Schneider Carodine, assistant vice president for student affairs, said the site, studentinsurance.shcc.ufl.edu, was created to help families see the UF requirements for health insurance.
“When students receive admission to UF,” she said, “they will receive information in there about one of the conditions of enrollment being health insurance.”
If new students don’t prove that they have health insurance, they will be automatically enrolled into the policy that will appear on their UF bill 30 days before classes, Carodine said.
“Based on our research with other institutions that have mandatory health insurance, about 80 percent of students tend to be already covered by insurance through their parents,” she said.
For the students who choose to enroll in UF’s health care, financial aid money can now be used toward health insurance because the university has made it mandatory, Carodine said. That rule only applies to students enrolled in six or more credits.
Katherine Lindsey, assistant director of health administration at the Student Health Care Center, said upon looking at a list of the top 25 public schools in America, UF President Bernie Machen found many of them required health insurance for enrollment.
The decision to make health insurance mandatory at UF, made in March 2013, was a joint effort between the Student Health Care Center, the Student Affairs Office and the Student Government, she said.
“We want students to be healthy,” Lindsey said.
Some students aren’t feeling good about the shift to mandatory health care.
Andrew Bryan, a UF accounting combined-degree fifth-year student, said mandatory insurance seems like more of a burden.
“In theory it might sound all rosy, but in reality, I see it being more cost to the already debt-ridden college student,” Bryan, 21, said.
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 2/18/2014 under the headline "UF site to help families figure out mandatory health insurance"]
