Steubenville drops student health plans. (updated)
On Tuesday the Franciscan University of Steubenville announced that it would stop offering students health coverage at the end of the summer. Why? Contraception coverage and cost:
The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.
Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future.
It’s strange that the university would cite the contraception mandate as one of its reasons for dropping student health coverage now. First, the mandate doesn’t kick in until August 2013. And second, there’s a good chance the school will qualify for an exemption. Remember, the Department of Health and Human Services regulations exempt religious employers that primarily employ and serve co-religionists, and whose purpose is the inculcation of its religious values. If any Catholic college fits that bill, it’s Steubenville, whose student body is 95 percent Catholic. How do you think the school’s insistence that it’s not exempt will play at HHS when it applies for an exemption?
So if the contraception mandate doesn’t take effect until 2013, why rush to dump student health coverage?
Here’s how Tom Sofio, the university’s PR director, explained it to me:
This past March, HHS released a rule stipulating that all student health insurance plans carry per-incident coverage of $100,000—twice our current level of $50,000 per incident. In fall of 2013, the required per-incident coverage shoots to $500,000, and then fall of 2014 it goes up to no annual limit at all. This, of course, raises the premiums dramatically for our plan even in this first year, from $588 to about $1300, with unknown increases every year thereafter.
That does sound like a dramatic increase. But consider how much employers pay to cover single adults — often around $700 a month. Steubenville’s student premiums were $50 a month. And for what? If a student got hit by a car, he’d blow through his maximum in a few days, and likely be left with a mountain of debt for the costs his insurance wouldn’t cover. (Update: Contrary to Sofio’s claim, the ACA mandates [.pdf] that after September 23, 2012, the annual — not per-incident — maximum be no lower than $100,000.) The Affordable Care Act was designed in part to address that problem. By mandating that student plans phase in higher maximums, the law protects students from perilous financial exposure.
Yesterday Michael Hernon, the university’s vice president for advancement, appeared on Fox and Friends to explain the decision. He claimed that the ACA “would double what we have to charge our students, and then it would triple. That’s something that’s both a moral and an economic injustice, in my opinion. The Affordable Care Act is simply unaffordable for our students.” Nice line. So why not let the students decide whether they could afford their share of the premiums?
As for Hernon’s claim that premiums would triple, that’s baseless speculation — because there’s no way to know what the premiums would be in 2013, when the maximum goes up to $500,000. By Hernon’s logic, premiums would continue to rise to infinity, once the cap is done away with completely in 2014. But that’s not going to happen. Because that’s not how insurers calculate premiums. They consider a variety of factors, not simply a policy’s maximum coverage. The ACA completely eliminates lifetime limits on non-student health plans. Does anyone expect premiums to rise to infinity? It’s possible that Steubenville’s premiums were going to double for reasons unrelated to the ACA, such as record claims during the previous year.
Of course, Steubenville has never made a secret of its opposition to the contraception mandate. Its president, Fr. Terence Henry, believes the law directs Catholic institutions “to cooperate with the culture of death.” But that death-dealing, religious-freedom-trampling law also makes the university’s decision to end student health coverage relatively easy — because it allows people under the age of twenty-six to be covered under their parent’s plan. Steubenville gets some budgetary breathing room. Students get better coverage. Everybody wins. Unless their parents’ plans cover contraception. And I bet many do.
So much for student health coverage at Steubenville. What about employees? Despite the university’s strong opposition to the contraception mandate, it’s not doing away with employee coverage. As Dan Gilgoff reports, “the school is retaining its health care plan for employees because it is hopeful that legal challenges to the health care law will prevent much of it from taking effect.” So the university can’t abide the contraception mandate (that doesn’t go into effect until August 2013) when it comes to student coverage, but for employees, it’s all right? Interesting distinction. Sofio told me that the university “went on record last November in opposition to the HHS mandate because it requires us to provide services and coverages opposed to our strongly held Catholic beliefs.”
Not according to the university’s employee health plan (.pdf), which went into effect on January 1, 2012. A few pages in, the program states:
This group health plan believes this plan is a “grandfathered health plan” under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Affordable Care Act). As permitted by the Affordable Care Act, a grandfathered health plan can preserve certain basic health coverage that was already in effect when that law was enacted. Being a grandfathered health plan means that your plan may not include certain consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act that apply to other plans, for example, the requirement for the provision of preventive health services without any cost sharing.
This means that so long as Franciscan University does not significantly alter the plan by cutting benefits or raising costs to employees, it won’t have to provide contraception coverage. It won’t even be subject to whatever form the accommodation takes. Yesterday the university sent a letter to students promising to “do everything in our power to protest the ill effects of this unjust federal regulation.” But it doesn’t look like the the school will be much affected by the ACA. (Except for the part that allows them to hand off student coverage to parents.) Do the university’s spokesmen understand this? Not if their public statements are any indication.
And those statements have garnered plenty of media attention — some criticism, sure, but lots of praise from conservative Catholic quarters. Catholic Online declares “Franciscan University of Steubenville Takes Stand to Respect and Protect Life.” Taking a stand involves risk. But if the school won’t have to include contraception coverage in employee health plans, and if it wouldn’t have had to include it in student plans until 2013, and if it may receive an exemption from HHS, then where’s the risk? What price does the school pay to protest the Affordable Care Act? Looks pretty cheap to me.
Tags: Affordable Care Act, contraception, health care reform, HHS
Excellent information.
A number of news reports tell us that less than 200 (out of an enrollment of 2500) students bought this insurance. Franciscan University of Steubenville required that its students have insurance, so clearly more than 90 percent of them were covered by their parents or obtained coverage elsewhere. It strikes me that this is a rather minor alteration in how Franciscan University of Steubenville does business, but the play it is getting on the web is more equivalent to what we might see if the government dropped Medicare!
An interesting headline:
Obama Forces Franciscan University to Drop Health Insurance Coverage
Isn’t everyone under 26 covered by their parent’s health insurance plan as of last year?
Yes, I mentioned that a couple times in the post — although it’s not automatic.
How many of the remaining 2300 students are on mommy and daddies health Plan thanks to Obamacare?? Another fake religious liberty ploy.. As Lawyer Welsh asked “USCCB have you no shame?’
David, there’s so much shoddy coverage of Steubenville’s decision that I’m considering writing another post to rebut some of it.
“And second, there’s a good chance the school would qualify for an exemption. Remember, the Department of Health and Human Services regulations exempt religious employers that primarily employ and serve co-religionists, and whose purpose is the inculcation of its religious values. If any Catholic college fits that bill, it’s Steubenville, whose student body is 95 percent Catholic.”
Grant, I just want to question this specific claim in your well-researched post. Is it the sheer number/percentage of co-religionists it serves that determines religious exemption, or is it some other factor, e.g. its admission criteria? In other words: if a college’s admission criteria doesn’t weigh religious affiliation heavily, or at all, can it be said to primarily serve co-religionists?
By way of comparison: when I was at Loyola in the early-mid 1980s, I believe a sizable majority of its students were Catholic. It probably didn’t go as high as Franciscan’s 95%, but it could easily have been over 60%, even taking into account its postgraduate professional programs like law, business, medicine and (in those days) dentistry, where religious affiliation probably was not an important criterion for many applicants, and probably was not an important criterion in the university’s acceptance (I’m saying “probably” because I don’t know what the criteria actually were or are at Loyola).
FWIW – Franciscan’s admission criteria are available here: http://www.franciscan.edu/Admissions/Requirements/Undergraduate/ *Not* listed among the factors that it states it doesn’t discriminate against is religious affiliation.
I recognize that Franciscan undoubtedly thinks of its mission differently than a school like Loyola does, even though they’re both Catholic universities. If the HHS’s “primarily serves coreligionists” formula simply means “a bare majority (half +1) of the students”, then I’d think that a lot of Catholic universities would qualify as exempt institutions, even notorious dens of iniquity like Georgetown.
Sorry Grant, missed your reference.
Jim,
My hunch, and it is only that, is that HHS left the language deliberately vague to provide flexibility when considering exemption requests. I tend to doubt HHS will take admissions guidelines into account. Who knows whether, for HHS, “primarily” means “bare majority”? But I think 95 percent counts.
I will not be surprised to see more and more schools/companies/etc do exactly what Steubenville is starting to do and get out of the health care business. This will be the ‘unintended’ consequence of the ACA.
Bruce: It may not be unintended. A lot of student health plans are a joke. It’s in the students’ best interest to be on their parents’ more comprehensive plans.
Bruce ..’and get out of the health care business.’
dropping 8% of the students on a junk plan and about 90% of them go on mommy/daddy plan means ‘getting out of the health care business’ who is hurt?
A junk plan is when a student gets in a car/motorcycle accident and the $50k max is the first night bill in the ER.
When and if the SC overturns the ACA Bruce will see a lot of unintended consequences.
So if Obamacare is overturned by the legislature, that includes the mandate that students are covered on their parents’ plans, yes?
As Tom Sofio, the university’s PR director, wrote to me:
This past March, HHS released a rule stipulating that all student health insurance plans carry per-incident coverage of $100,000
The minimum for student plans for this year is $100,000 per year, not per incident. See page 7772 here:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-02-11/pdf/2011-3109.pdf
That is even less adequate than $100,000 per incident.
Boston College has a no-limit student plan. It costs $2,290 per 12 months.
Regarding their employee plan. If it is grandfathered, they are free of any contraception obligations.
They can make reasonable adjustments to their plan in future years and still keep its grandfathered status. THe HHS regulations spell out what changes are permissable.
Grant, I just want to question this specific claim in your well-researched post. Is it the sheer number/percentage of co-religionists it serves that determines religious exemption, or is it some other factor, e.g. its admission criteria? In other words: if a college’s admission criteria doesn’t weigh religious affiliation heavily, or at all, can it be said to primarily serve co-religionists?
If their employee plan is grandfathered, it doesn’t matter what percentage of Catholics are involved.
Grandfathering applies to all employers – no religious requirement involved.
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/features/rights/grandfathered-plans/index.html
John, thanks for the correction regarding the annual limits on student plans. FYI, in my post I linked to an HHS document outlining how grandfathered plans can be changed and maintain their exempt status.
[...] the faculty’s coverage, then why not also wait before dropping the student coverage? The alleged additional costs, we’re told, but, if so, then this particular decision was made for economic reasons rather [...]
Grant – updates. Fr. Henry, president of Steubenville, was on EWTN’s Arroyo comedy hour last nite.
He repeatedly stated that the university would never, never, never (lost count of how many nevers he said) support an “intrinsic evil”.
BTW – you might want to reference MSW’s post today. Henry has invited a retired Air Force general who served in the NSA/CIA and oversaw and approved the use of torture (another intrinsic evil) as their commencement speaker.
To be consistent, why aren’t there any complaints about a “speaker” who supports another form of intrinsic evil at a “catholic” university? Seems to be a double standard at play here.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/more-graduation-wars
So if the contraception mandate doesn’t take effect until 2013, why rush to dump student health coverage?
I hadn’t looked into the question of whether the one-year extension applied to student health plans (as opposed to employee plans), but it turns out that it does.
The HHS says that, in the case of “non-profit institutions of higher education with religious objections to covering contraceptive services…”
“Contraceptive benefits will not have to be provided in its student health insurance plan until policy years beginning on or after August 1, 2013.”
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=CMS-2011-0016-0108 (see page 16457)
So, you are right that, as far as ontraception is concerned, they could have waited another year before deciding whether to continue to offer student health insurance.
However, since the lede in their announcement is about contraception, most blogs and news outlets have assumed that that that is why they dropped student coverage now.
If you copy and paste this link into your browser, it should work:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=CMS-2011-0016-0108
Apparently, Commonweal’s server has a problem with it so it’s not clickable.
Grant,
I agree that the timing of the decision seems premature. However, why are you conflating the ACA itself with the contraception mandate in your criticism of Fr. Henry? The mandate is a particular regulatory implimentation of a provision in the ACA, but the particulars of the regulation as originally conceived (limited exemption, coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortifacients, etc.) were not required under the provision of the statutory language of the ACA. A person can legitimately critisize the mandate without objecting to other beneficial provisions of the ACA (expanded dependent coverage, coverage for pre-existing condition, etc.). Also, the fact that the employee coverage is not subject to the mandate due to being grandfathered in does not mean that the mandate is not problematic since it places handcuffs on the university that prevent it from altering the coverage in the future lest they be subject to the mandate.
The ACA requirement that ins. plans limit out-of-pocket costs to students for expensive medical procedures have many college and university administrations worried that the ins. companies will respond by raising their premiums, and I know for a fact that many schools have already raised student premiums sharply for the coming year, blaming the health care reform bill in letters to students. I’d be willing to bet the Steubenville admin simply decided it would make more financial sense for them to cancel student coverage entirely rather than raise rates on the few students who opt for student ins. coverage now that most are still covered under their parents’ plans, and the mandate — which, as you say, doesn’t even go into effect for another year — just served as a convenient excuse, allowing them to not only deflect attention from their own self-serving motives but earn them points for standing up for “religious liberty” as well.
My understanding of the reason that universities offer and/or insist upon student health insurance is primarily to limit their own liability. Perhaps the lawyers among us can enlighten us as to the likely effects upon the institutions who follow Steubenville’s lead. Lawsuits? Large out-of-court settlements? Declining enrollment? Or, little effect at all?
Correct, Michael. It is also why universities spend time on student policies around alcohol, drugs, prescriptions, and more and more students with behavioral diagnoses that could result in suicide, violence, acting out behaviors that harm self/others.
Universities have to show that they have done due diligence and have both trained staff and policies in place. Many have had to beef up on campus security; hire more for student counseling; enhance RD trainings, have vendors in place to do annual trainings around security, drug/alcohol use, mental health, etc.
As a private university does not Steubenville have the right to take such action in order
to protect its very d’etre raison without being subjected to all this carping and criticism?
Of course it does! Especially in light of the fact it exists only to proclaim the teachings of
the church and has an obligation to its faculty and students to take such action that would
support its claims. Does not the University have this right? From the comments here it
would seen many would deny them the religious freedom protected by our Constitution
( before it was redefined by the current Administration). Many more such Catholic institutions, the ones who really teach Truth, will no doubt follow their lead.
No, it does not have the right not to be criticized. Talk about rewriting the Bill of Rights.
Asyoung, Franciscan had no obligation to cover contraception in next year’s student health plan, but has created the impression, picked up by many blogs, tv stations and newspapers, that contraception was the reason it stopped offering the plan.
The comments here have been directed at correcting that impression.
12 more cases to add to the 4 the Becket Fund has already filed:
WASHINGTON—Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in a May 21 statement applauded 43 dioceses, hospitals, schools and church agencies for filing 12 lawsuits around the nation saying the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate violates religious freedom.
http://www.usccb.org/news/2012/12-088.cfm
Letter from Fr. Jenkins about the lawsuit Notre Dame filed today:
http://president.nd.edu/communications/a-message-from-father-jenkins-on-the-hhs-lawsuit/
Interesting quote:
“Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs.”