A while back, Bob posted on why so-called "student health insurance" is such a bad deal. For one thing, it's over-priced, and offers limited coverage, especially if you end up ill at the end of the school year.
This is somewhat ameliorated by ObamneyCare©'s provision making it possible for "children" to stay on their parents plan until age 26.
But what if the plan itself has an internally self-contradictory mechanism that both offers coverage but then declines to pay out benefits under it?
Hunh?
Here's the issue:
"A group of Fordham University law students has organized an off-campus birth control clinic in response to the school's policy prohibiting the prescription of contraception at its campus health centers ... [Fordham's] policy states: "The Insurer is required by law to offer this coverage and pay the Covered Percentage of the Covered Charges for Contraceptive Drugs and Devices."
So what's the problem?
Well:
"[M]any students ... were turned away when they tried to obtain contraception or a prescription for it at campus health centers."
And therein lies the rub (so to speak):
If one must buy the student health insurance (as many - most? - universities require), and the policy at once states that there's coverage, but limits that coverage to University-sponsored facilities which explicitly deny coverage for a product or procedure, than one is essentially paying for something which can never actually be covered.
Now, I'm not necessarily supportive of Universities providing birth control items, and I'm definitely unhappy with a law requiring insurance coverage for lifestyle choices. But it is (apparently) the law, and it seems to me that Fordham is blatantly flouting it.
This is somewhat ameliorated by ObamneyCare©'s provision making it possible for "children" to stay on their parents plan until age 26.
But what if the plan itself has an internally self-contradictory mechanism that both offers coverage but then declines to pay out benefits under it?
Hunh?
Here's the issue:
"A group of Fordham University law students has organized an off-campus birth control clinic in response to the school's policy prohibiting the prescription of contraception at its campus health centers ... [Fordham's] policy states: "The Insurer is required by law to offer this coverage and pay the Covered Percentage of the Covered Charges for Contraceptive Drugs and Devices."
So what's the problem?
Well:
"[M]any students ... were turned away when they tried to obtain contraception or a prescription for it at campus health centers."
And therein lies the rub (so to speak):
If one must buy the student health insurance (as many - most? - universities require), and the policy at once states that there's coverage, but limits that coverage to University-sponsored facilities which explicitly deny coverage for a product or procedure, than one is essentially paying for something which can never actually be covered.
Now, I'm not necessarily supportive of Universities providing birth control items, and I'm definitely unhappy with a law requiring insurance coverage for lifestyle choices. But it is (apparently) the law, and it seems to me that Fordham is blatantly flouting it.
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