Overlooking waiver, some students default to University health plan

When Sarah Hammit '04 took a hard fall snowboarding in January of her senior year, the resulting concussion, cracked kneecap and sprained ankles were only the beginning of a problem that continues to disrupt her life today.

She and her family never anticipated the bureaucratic nightmare that unfolded throughout the initial X-rays, an MRI, surgery and months of painful physical therapy. Only when they began receiving medical bills for thousands of dollars did they recognize an oversight regarding her insurance coverage — it was being provided for by the University, not her family provider.

"Apparently, I was enrolled in the [Student Health Plan] all four years and my parents had been paying for this all four years and we never knew," Hammit said. "The bills for school are so high you'd have to look pretty carefully to notice the extra expense."

Hammit's situation may not be unusual. According to numbers provided by Health Services Associate director Janet Finnie, 43 percent of the undergraduates currently enrolled in the University's Student Health Plan (SHP) have been enrolled by default, because they never returned a signed waiver form providing an alternate source of comparable insurance.

Every year in May, the University mails waiver forms to students that must be returned by June 30. Harvard and Yale have similar systems.

"I'll bet there are hundreds of students who are signed up for it and don't even realize they're paying it," Hammit said.

The potential consequences of such an oversight can be significant, as Hammit realized after her accident.

Because the University's SHP automatically became her primary provider of coverage, her family's private insurance company became secondary.

Hammit said that not only did that secondary provider refuse to cover any more of her new medical expenses than the SHP did, but it also went back through Hammit's medical history during her previous four years at the University and cut back coverage it had already provided, billing Hammit's family for the difference.

"We get bills ... for hundreds of dollars, whereas through my family health insurance, it would have been about a $20 copay," Hammit said.

Michele Gregory, manager of the SHP, said that New Jersey law requires all students to have comprehensive medical coverage. Not only must parents submit a waiver, but a student's family coverage must also be at least as comprehensive as the University's.

"If they do not meet one of the requirements, they elect to enroll in the SHP," Gregory said in an email. "The University does ask parents/students to enroll voluntarily and the deadline for a decision is June 30 of each academic year."

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Chief Medical Officer Daniel Silverman reiterated that students have a chance to opt out of the plan by signing the waiver, but did not comment further.

Hammit noted that her three older siblings went to universities — Boston College, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan — that have no such default plans.

Nonetheless, she said she understands why coverage should be mandatory.

"They just want all the students to have health insurance, which is totally understandable," Hammit said. "For students who don't have health insurance regularly, it's probably a really good alternative."

But she added, "I just have a problem with how you're signed up for it."

Because a University waiver form sent over the summer with a variety of other letters can easily be overlooked, she suggested requiring students to sign up for the SHP or turn in the waiver before allowing them to sign up for classes in the fall.

"It should be made much more clear that you're signing up for something and paying for it," she said. "It's just very deceitful, very manipulative the way that they did it."

Nearly two years after her accident, Hammit is only now starting to walk without a brace. Recovering from the financial losses will take even longer.

Though her family was eventually able to pay her bills, she noted that some of those payments were late, leaving her with a badly damaged credit record.

The bills "were still under my name and it was still a lot of money and it took us a while to pay them off," she said. "I can't even get a credit card now."

But she said that she was lucky: "My parents had the means to pay it, but not every family would."

A graduate of the geosciences department, Hammit now works at an environmental consulting firm but continues to live at home to recover from her accident.

"It's not like I'm blaming the University completely. It was a series of unfortunate events that the University wasn't very helpful with," she said. "It's just caused so much grief in my life and I don't want it to happen to any other students."