SCUP Links: School-Sponsored Health Insurance: Planning for a New Reality

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time. It's updated every two weeks.

SCUP Link

College-sponsored health plans are in the news, all of a sudden, and it's not all good news. Of course, we all know that with the passage of the health care reform legislation, things are going to change. This week, the New York attorney general's office released the results of an investigation into such health plans as they now exist - and it's not a flattering report, suggesting that some practices may be illegal. How timely, then, that the current issue of SCUP's journal, Planning for Higher Education, has an intriguing Viewpoint by Bryan A. Liang, that is right on topic. Liang, who is a triple threat - PhD, MD, JD - has titled his essay School-Sponsored Health Insurance: Planning for a New Reality. Here's also a link to a report on the New York investigation in The New York Times. From that article:

The insurers who run the plans, and profit from them, face the most potential legal liability. The attorney general’s investigation does not suggest that college administrators are lining their pockets with the kind of kickbacks that were common in the office’s investigation of student loans, but rather that they are making poor decisions in an area where they have little expertise.
Complicating the issue in some cases is the involvement of insurance brokers, who often try to negotiate with colleges to create plans that pay out as little as possible to students. Brokers also entice smaller colleges with incentives to help make plans more attractive. Brokers paid Pace more than $80,000 in such benefits, more than half of which went toward an athletic department golf classic.

SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are: