While the recent health care bill will not have any effect on the majority of the population for several years, the legislation will directly affect students and the masses of post-grads entering today’s gloomy job market. The bill brings a major change – young adults may now remain on their parents’ plans until their 26th birthday.

“This is huge,” said Max Rothstein ’11. “This is great for people just out of college who can’t get a real job right away and who therefore can’t get insurance – unless you work at Trader Joe’s or Starbucks or one of those rare, rare random jobs that provides health care…but this change is great for all of us. It is making uniform what is a reasonable practice already.”

With the economy still reeling from the recession, jobs that offer comprehensive health care plans continue to decrease.

“I realized that there is no Health Center to make things easy outside of Wesleyan,” said Becca Levit ’12. “I’m entering the job market in a little over two years, and in this economy who knows whether I can find a job with health care coverage right out of college? Luckily, the recent changes in Congress’ health care bill give me four more years to find that special job.”
Although this change will enable many students to stay on their parents’ health care plan throughout college, it may have a negative effect on students who continue to choose the University plan.

“With more undergraduate students who can remain on their parents’ plan, the student health insurance plan might dwindle with less people enrolling in it, which makes the cost higher for each student who does choose to enroll,” said Director of the University Health Center Joyce Walter.

Because high cost premiums are spread among the students enrolled in the University plan, fewer students on the plan means the remaining students will be left to soak up the costs of high premium students.

“We had an average of about 900 people on the student plan a few years ago,” Walter said. “The outliers were really high claims, but you had more people to spread that out to. If you have 500, and essentially as many outliers with really high claims, then that’s going to raise the premium for all of those students.”

The new health care bill may also affect graduate students who are over 26-years old—graduate students are offered the option to choose between the University’s student plan or the employee health plan.

According to Walter, about half of graduate students choose the student plan.

“People probably don’t realize that most graduate programs offer a plan,” she said. “But the graduate students are considered to be quasi employees. Usually graduate claims are higher because they might have families. They might use the health center less, they might use private practices more.”

In addition to changes to student coverage, the new bill will change the way student loans are handled.

“It’s going to save us money in the long run, no matter if you are a tax payer or if you are receiving a loan,” Walter said. “It’s a win-win.”

President Barack Obama eliminated the Federal Family Education Loan Program which granted indirect loans using banks as middlemen between the Department of Education and borrowing students.

“What they are doing is making a system that was incredibly complicated a lot more streamlined,” Rothstein said. “Before, there were private lenders in charge of administering those loans. Doing this directly saves money on both sides. It will remove the bureaucratic costs so that more money can go directly to students.”

With fewer indirect loans, the Department of Education will no longer have to pay the private institution a percentage of the loan amount, and the Department of Education is predicted to save tens of billions of dollars in the next decade, which will be used to increase the number of Pell Grants.

“The White House says there is going to be $61 billion in savings,” Rothstein said. “This is because the money won’t be going to private companies. This kind of thinking is helpful, because it is a solution in a lot of ways. It is saving the government and tax payers money that can be directed to loans…It’s a public good.”