San Antonio — As the cost of health care continues to increase, many college athletic departments are rethinking how they provide medical insurance to their athletes.
Faced with rapidly escalating insurance premiums, many Division I programs now require athletes to show proof of coverage under a primary health-insurance plan before they are allowed to compete. By coordinating the athletic department’s secondary insurance with those primary plans, officials said during a panel discussion on health-care costs at the NCAA’s annual meeting here, programs can keep insurance costs in check.
Others institutions, though, recognizing that many athletes lack primary health insurance, are allowing those students who can’t afford to purchase a plan on their own to use part of their scholarship money to pay a premium.
In most cases, athletes who lack that primary form of insurance rely solely on whatever protection the institution can provide if they get hurt. And that can be costly, officials said. “What you need to do is take those instances where you know someone doesn’t have insurance and [determine] what options do you have to get those individuals insured,” said Andy Massey, head athletic trainer at Tulane University, in Louisiana.
At Marshall University roughly a quarter of the West Virginia institution’s athletes lack health insurance, said David Steele, associate athletic director there. When the athletic department saw a six-figure increase in its insurance premium last year, officials felt compelled to take a new approach. They opted for an “aggregate deductible” plan, which allows for programs to reach a certain threshold of expected claims expenses before taking additional steps.
Massey said officials at Tulane took a similar approach several years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, when the university scaled back to eight varsity sports. At that time, far fewer athletes needed medical coverage. But since insurance premiums are based on previous claims—in Tulane’s case, incidents that occurred in its larger, pre-Katrina population of athletes—the amount the athletic department shelled out remained high. So they went with the aggregate plan, he said.
“In three years, we’ve saved $600,000,” he said. “When you realize that in a two-year period you’ve paid $500,000 in premiums, but the claims paid out only totaled $300,000, you’re leaving money on the table.”
2 Responses to At Many Colleges, No Health Insurance Means No Playing Time
11223435 - March 29, 2011 at 10:53 am
….and, coming in at Number Ten: we’re special.
madprof - March 29, 2011 at 11:16 pm
2, 3 & 4 boil down to: meeting useful people.
I’d find #6 (diversity of outlook) a bit more convincing if the author could demonstrate that these university leaders were doing something more than meeting people from the same class of cosmopolitan elites that move freely about the globe. Many educational leaders in the US could achieve some diversity of outlook by actually listening to people in the poorer and/or neighborhoods that surround their campuses.