Insurance Coverage for College Students with Medical Needs
Senator John Sununu (R-NH) has introduced legislation—known as
“Michelle's Law”—to amend both the federal Employee
Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Internal Revenue
Code of 1986, to ensure that dependent students who take a medically
necessary leave of absence do not lose health insurance coverage.
Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) are the
bill’s co-sponsors.
CHADD supports legislation that assists persons with disabilities and
medical needs to participate in school programs. S. 400 is supported by
many of CHADD’s sister voluntary health agencies participating in
the National Health Council, to which CHADD belongs.
Specifically, S. 400 would:
•Prohibit ERISA regulated health
plans from terminating the coverage of dependent full-time students
enrolled as a postsecondary educational institution because of a
medically necessary (as certified by a physician) leave of absence.
•Require a plan to continue coverage
for one-year from the start of the absence or until the coverage
would otherwise cease, whichever is earliest.
•Cover enrolled dependents of ERISA
regulated health plan participants who are 18 or older and enrolled as
full time students before the absence began.
•Provide that should an employer or
health insurance issuer change group health plans during a student's
leave of absence that the successor plan must continue coverage through
the term of the absence.
•Does not mandate additional medical
benefits.
National Health Council staff observe that while the scope of this bill
is rather narrow—estimated to apply to less than 1 percent of all
college-aged students—this modest change will have a dramatic
impact on those students and families whose costs and hardships may
otherwise be enormous.
Copies of the complete legislation are available from the THOMAS section of the
Library of Congress Web site; enter S. 400 where it
asks for a bill number.
Posted January 23, 2008
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