September 26, 2005
Spotlight
Dental Insurance Revamped for Students
Open Enrollment Ends This Week
If you’re paying for everything out of your own pocket, going to the dentist for a checkup may seem like a luxury. This was the situation that many Harvard graduate and undergraduate students found themselves in until this year. Now, if they act by Sept. 30, these students can enroll in a new plan offered by Delta Dental, which brings affordable dental care and services aimed at preventing problems that are implicated in serious health conditions.
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The plan provides 100 percent coverage for all diagnostic and preventative services and discounted prices for most other services. |
Building a Plan
Until 2003, University Health Services (UHS) at Harvard sponsored an optional
dental plan for students. Financed solely by premiums collected from students
($130 per year) and with a relatively generous benefit cap of $1,500, the
plan was consistently in the red. In an effort to limit losses, UHS restructured
the student plan, increasing the premium to $225 and cutting coverage to
$400.
Student enrollment plummeted from more than 2,000 to approximately 350.
The remaining students were those who expected to need expensive treatment
in
the near future; their costs could no longer be defrayed by the premiums
of students
who had purchased the plan in case costly care was required, but who ultimately
did not use dental services. As a result, UHS discontinued the student
dental plan at the start of last spring. To develop a substitute, UHS contacted
several major dental insurers, but companies declined to submit any bids.
So UHS offered
students a discounted package deal of $180 for an annual exam, X-ray, and
cleaning, and 10 percent savings on treatment at Holyoke Center.
At a March 2005 open meeting between UHS representatives and graduate students from across the university, students repeatedly expressed concerns about the dearth of affordable, timely dental care options. In response, UHS and a task force of graduate students began to intensively reinvestigate the options. The task force received bids from several plans that provide discounted services on other university campuses, as well as a newly designed plan from Delta Dental.
As a result of this work, UHS is now offering Delta Dental’s Preferred One plan to undergraduate and graduate students. The plan provides 100 percent coverage for all diagnostic and preventative services and discounted prices for most other services.
The Extras of Good Oral Care
By encouraging routine preventive care through a dental health plan,
UHS has taken advantage of one of the few areas of our health care
system that
is prevention-based.
And Harvard is one of the first institutions to implement a dental
plan for students that promotes preventive oral health. Encouraging the
use
of routine
dental services for preventive care not only minimizes the risk of
more serious health issues, but saves money because it limits the future
need
of treating
more costly and serious diseases that arise from poor oral health.
While these benefits hold true for all patients, there are further advantages to offering routine dental services for students in particular. Dentists play a unique role in students’ lives because they are in a position to recognize eating disorders and diseases from oral sexual contact, which are prevalent in young adult populations.
We applaud the hard work that UHS invested in developing the Delta Dental option for students. For more information about the Preferred One plan, visit http://huhs.harvard.edu/HealthnDentalPlans/DeltalOptionsService.htm. Students can enroll at http://huhs.harvard.edu/PDF/DentalEnrollmentForm.pdf until Friday, September 30.
Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College