The price of Cornell’s Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) has surged 25 percent in the last three years. The reason? Costs driven up by a range of new services, including gender replacement surgery:
As guidelines for student health care set by the American College Health Association have become more stringent, Cornell expanded SHIP’s coverage to meet the new requirements, driving its cost up.
Services added to SHIP this year included sexual health screening, immunizations, physical exams and other preventive care and services recommended by ACHA, said Valerie Lyon, associate director of business and finance at Gannett.
Additionally, SHIP now covers transgender surgery — which Lyon linked to mental health in the college-age demographic — though she noted that there would be “no impact on the plan in terms of cost since so few students take advantage of this.”
The plan, which enrolls more than 10,000 students (about one-third of the undergraduate population, and the majority of graduate and international students), has risen from $1,514 to $1,898 since 2008. The new services are largely required or recommended by the Affordable Care Act; if schools not comply with the regulations, they must stop offering their plans.
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