If grad school and strollers are both in your future, you may want to think about staggering your studies and starting a family.
Recently, graduate students at Stanford University and three University of California campuses have had their health benefits significantly reduced. At these two universities and a number of others across the country, health insurance for the family members of graduate students has been cut, leaving some to look for coverage elsewhere.
The diminished coverage at these schools seems indicative of a national trend, according to Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a health care advocacy group in Oakland, Calif.
"It is within trends not just in California, but across the nation to have employers and universities drop dependant coverage. It's disturbing," he said.
In addition to Stanford and the University of California branches at Berkeley, Davis and Irvine, coverage for graduate students' dependents has also been cut at the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary.
Stanford administrators opted to cut insurance coverage for dependents of graduate students in 2006, saying that the plans were not cost effective. They arrived at the decision in consultation with the Stanford Graduate Student Council, according to Ira Friedman, director of Stanford's health services.
The plan was only covering around 100 spouses and children, and the small number of people enrolled in Stanford's graduate schools made cost of coverage "unreasonable" - about $1,000 per person per week - said Kristina Keating, a member of Stanford's Graduate Student Council.
Graduate students were left to look elsewhere for coverage for their families, often from publicly funded programs like MediCal and Santa Clara Healthy Families, Keating said. But while some students were able to take advantage of these public programs, others were denied. The programs only consider offering coverage to families whose income is below a certain threshold, according to Wright. Still, falling below that threshold does not guarantee coverage, he added.
Wright said family members of students who were denied by programs like MediCal ended up either uninsured or paying expensive premiums for coverage with private insurers as individuals.
"(Public programs) are not a viable option for many people," Wright said. "If you're a young couple without children, it doesn't matter how poor you are. There's no coverage available."
However, not all universities are following suit. The Yale Health Plan, for instance, continues to offer coverage for spouses, same-sex partners and children, according to Katie Kelly, a Yale spokesperson. She said 250 students currently have family members covered by the university plan and added there are no plans to reduce or cut their benefits.
According to Brown's Director of Insurance and Risk Jeanne Hebert, health coverage for family members of Brown graduate students is not a standard benefit. But family members can purchase health insurance through the University, she added.
Administrators at universities that had both cut and kept health coverage for graduate students' family members maintained that the current economic climate might not necessarily be a critical factor for other schools trying to make the same decision. Instead, they characterized such a decision as a normal budgetary issue that has been considered year in and year out.
Still, Wright thinks the problem is pervasive enough to warrant attention.
"Hopefully we won't reach a tipping point where employers and institutions are forced to drop coverage all together because of competitive pressures," Wright said.
