Exploring group health insurance for students in Canadian post-secondary institutions

Across Canadian post-secondary institutions, students experience varying levels of fees and coverage for private health insurance. These plans are mandatory, while democratically and autonomously governed by students as part of their membership in student societies. This market is of a sizeable scale with an estimated total of 153 different group-plans insuring 1.58 million students across the country. Given the complexities of how benefits are described and how the premiums are set, it is difficult to compare all plans benefits in a standardized way. This creates a challenge for elected student leaders and their staff to ensure the best value for dollar for their plan's coverage. This project provides a benchmark of who's who in the post secondary student health insurance market in Canada. It identifies and compiles information from the six main providers of this form of private health insurance. This includes a comparison of the current state of plans, based on annual plan costs, and an overview of the types of coverage provided to students in each group. A descriptive and empirical analysis is applied in order to give a more comprehensive understanding of the current landscape of the market, with a focus on the annual plan costs across providers, provinces and students groups. The results show that there are differences in annual plan costs depending on undergraduate or graduate level of study. There are also differences across provider networks and across the provinces. With all student groups, cost is expected (though not shown in this project) to be at least in part, a reflection of the level of benefits provided. In terms of benefits, with some exceptions, most plans cover all three categories of vision, dental and extended health benefits. Nevertheless, without regulated minimums or maximums, there is a lack of uniformity in the range of benefits provided. --Leaf ii.