Do Your Inbound International Students Have Adequate Medical Coverage?

There are more international students studying in the US than ever before, and international students have been increasingly choosing more diverse school options. That has meant that schools, across the board, have witnessed an increasing number of international students attending their institutions.

This has led some schools to reconsider their policies about international student health insurance in an effort to ensure their students have adequate medical coverage while they’re studying in the US. The question that lingers, however, is whether or not students truly do have adequate and appropriate medical coverage when they arrive to study at your school.

Do You Mandate Your Policy?

Many schools offer health insurance to their students, both domestic and international. But fewer schools mandate their policies to their international students—that is, they don’t require students to enroll in the school’s sponsored coverage. While some argue that this gives students greater freedom of choice to find plans that truly fit their needs, that flexibility can cause all kinds of unintended problems.

The first question schools should ask is whether or not they have a mandated policy: Does the school provide an insurance plan and require their international students to pay for and enroll in the coverage? If the answer is no, then the first step in ensuring students have adequate medical coverage should be to mandate the policy.

Why Mandate the Policy?

Some argue that by not mandating an insurance policy, schools are offering students greater freedom to pick a plan that fits their needs. Unfortunately, many students don’t understand the insurance market—which can mean they end up without adequate medical coverage.

Given that freedom, students will often simply purchase the plan with the lowest price; these plans often don’t offer adequate medical coverage, but they look attractive from the point of view of a student with limited financial resources. Other students may simply not understand how much coverage they need to stay protected in the expensive US medical system.

The US medical system is vastly different from what many inbound international students are used to, so students may purchase inadequate coverage simply because they don’t realize they need more to cover their healthcare costs in the US. That can cause problems later on down the line when students go to use their insurance and find out they’re not covered, or they have to pay out of pocket for many services.

Mandated, but Not Separate

Perhaps your institution mandates an insurance plan for students, but you offer the same US based, domestic-style plan to both international and domestic students. That can cause problems because the international student body has different needs than the domestic student demographic.

This can mean the international students attending your school have inadequate coverage or, alternatively, it could mean they’re paying for coverage they don’t need. Consider separating the plans for international students and domestic students to ensure both groups have the coverage they need.

Review Your Plan

The final step to ensuring your international students have adequate medical coverage is to review the plan you have in place or the one you’re considering implementing. Obviously, you can mandate a separate plan for international students, and they can still end up with inadequate coverage if the plan isn’t selected carefully.

Take the time to deliberately review the coverage offered by your plan, along with the terms and conditions outlined by the provider. You may also want to review additional features of the plan such as support services. Some plans may offer great coverage, but your students will never use their insurance if they don’t understand how it works.

Look for plans that offer additional educational and informational supports, along with language support for international students to ensure your students not only have adequate coverage, but that they understand how they can use that coverage, too.