Health care poses a challenge for grads

When College alum Philip Rosen graduated last year, he started working in July but found that his job would not provide him with health insurance until October.

That left him in a predicament few students anticipate: how to obtain decent health insurance promptly after graduation.

And for some students, that proves to be a grueling and often risky challenge.

"The first day at my job . we had to make decisions about our level of coverage. I felt somewhat uninformed about health care plans up to that point," Rosen said. "It's a stressful start when you have to decide if you want to buy life insurance on day one."

For the gap between July and October, Rosen decided to buy a health care plan through COBRA, a 1986 act that offers former employees and dependents coverage for a price usually lower than individual plans - but higher than most employer-provided plans.

Rosen said he is now happy with his employer-provided health care. But having to buy a COBRA plan was "frustrating and expensive," he said. "It would have been great if Penn had offered a senior seminar about insurance options for post-graduation."

Rosen was not one of the roughly 8,500 students who enroll in the Penn Student Insurance Plan each year.

Enrollment in PSIP for at least one year, which costs $2,500, entitles Penn graduates to a continued plan. The continued plan offers the same coverage as the PSIP, but without access to Student Health Services and for about double the rate.

According to Evelyn Wiener, director of Student Health Services, "Many of the students who take the continued plan don't have another option for medical insurance and have ongoing medical expenses."

Just 89 students who graduated last May signed up for the continued plan.

Mandy, a 2007 School of Design alumna who requested that her last name be withheld, wanted to be in that pool.

Mandy was on PSIP for two years, and tried to continue her health coverage through Penn. But when she called Student Health Services, Mandy said she was directed to the Web site of one of Penn's insurance providers, the Chickering Group.

Mandy said she sought coverage through the Web site and ended up with a short-term medical plan that was not affiliated with Penn. The plan did not cover prescriptions - which for Mandy cost as much as the plan itself - or an ACL knee surgery she had in May.

Pat Rose, director of Career Services, said students rarely seek advice about health insurance from her office.

Rose said she thinks "health insurance should be first, at the top of the budget, before you spend money on anything else." Rose also noted that most Penn graduates end up at jobs or graduate schools with generous coverage plans.

Mandy, however, recalled that "a lot of people who I graduated with were stressed out about finding a job in time to get health insurance."

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