MSU’s health insurance mandate, which was implemented in fall 2011 and forced about 320 students to purchase health insurance from the university, will not be reinstated for the 2012-13 academic year.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said Friday that MSU no longer will require students to purchase insurance, but instead will require students to fill out a form stating if they have insurance. This will allow the university to monitor who has insurance, and hopefully help students who can expense the cost to financial aid under federal law to be able to do so.
The change in policy comes in light of restrictions the Michigan Legislature placed on higher education funding for universities that mandated students purchase health care.
Simon is hopeful the new phrasing of the insurance requirements will put MSU in line to receive the $3.4 million allocated to it in the state’s higher education budget.
“All students are required to fill out the form and they may check a box that indicates that they do not want and understand the risk of not having insurance, because unlike other places, we do not have a relationship with a hospital that would permit us to write those off,” Simon said.
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