Catholic College Dropping Student Health-Insurance Plan Over Contraception Mandate
As religious universities drop student health plans they will make the Affordable Care Act a lot more appealing because it allows students to stay on parent’s policies.
A Catholic university in eastern Ohio is ending health-insurance coverage for students in response to a much-debated federal mandate.
Ohio Dominican and Mount Carmel College of Nursing, Catholic schools in central Ohio, already don’t provide health insurance for students, spokeswomen at the colleges said on Wednesday.
Catholic-affiliated institutions across the country are challenging a mandate in the federal health-care law that requires insurance plans to provide coverage for contraception — including birth-control pills, sterilization and the so-called morning-after pill, which many conservatives view as an abortion-inducing drug.
Franciscan University in Steubenville announced last month that, because of the new rule, it no longer will offer a student health-insurance plan, beginning in the fall. The skyrocketing cost of the plan, also because of mandates, was another factor, spokesman Tom Sofio said yesterday. About 200 of the school’s 2,500 students are enrolled in the voluntary plan.
