Students enrolled in almost every major college and university in Rhode Island will pay more for their school’s health insurance in the fall, in one case almost $250 more – a result of the rising costs of health care everywhere.
Unmarried undergraduate students at Brown University will pay $1,568 for health care, up 18.8 percent from the $1,320 students are paying this year. University of Rhode Island students will pay $1,080 in the fall, a 12.5-percent increase from $960 this year. Rhode Island School of Design students’ health insurance will rise from $450 to $518. Rhode Island College students will pay $250, up from $233.
Johnson & Wales University’s health insurance policy will not cost students more in the fall semester than the cost now, said a spokeswoman for the school. Officials at both Providence College and Bryant College said they have not set the cost of health insurance for next school year because Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island – the insurance provider for both schools – has not yet told the schools what they will be charged in the fall.
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“We think it probably will go up. We don’t know exactly by how much,” said Sarokh Bhada, controller for Bryant College.
The rising cost of health care on campuses across Rhode Island is part of a larger phenomenon that is being experienced in virtually every industry. At several universities, the price tag for health insurance will increase by less than $100 per semester. But that is little consolation for the many students who already struggle to pay for their college education.
Full-time students at most universities are required to buy the school’s health insurance if they are not covered by their parent’s health insurance and do not have their own health insurance policy.
Officials at seven universities and colleges in Rhode Island all said their schools struggle to keep the cost of attending their schools as low as possible. Several of the schools said they went through or are still in the process of putting their health insurance package out for bid, to find the cheapest alternative, after they learned that their current insurance rate would go up in the fall.
In some instances, school administrators said they couldn’t find a cheaper insurance alternative than their current one. Others, like Providence College and Bryant College, are still searching.
“We are looking at a 12.5-percent increase in health insurance for URI students. It’s about an additional $120 for the annual plan. But we renewed our existing coverage.
We were finding out that many other schools reporting increases of 20 to 25 percent, so we opted to stay with Guaranteed Trust, based in Springfield, Mass. We’re trying to find ways to keep it down, and that’s why we opted to go with the original carrier.
“Had we gone out bid, we were looking at a 17- to 19-percent increase,” said Linda Acciardo, a spokeswoman for URI.
While the cost of insurance is up at almost every college in Rhode Island, the variations in both the hike in cost and the overall price tag of health insurance at each school also underscores differences among the institutions. Brown University, the only Ivy League school in the state, has both the highest rate hike and the highest overall cost of health insurance for students. Brown’s insurance provider is the Combined Insurance Company of America.
Students at Rhode Island College will pay $250 for the school’s health insurance in the fall – up from $233. In comparison, students at Rhode Island’s flagship state university, URI, will pay almost as much for health insurance as students at Brown University – $1,080 in the fall, up from $960 this year.
RIC uses New Jersey-based Bollinger Insurance Co.
“One of the missions of this college is to make quality education affordable, so the administration is very attuned to keeping the costs down so that students can afford to attend,” said Jane Fusco, a spokeswoman for RIC.
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