Supporters of the healthcare bill signed into law by President Barack Obama on Mar. 23 argue it will  aid students, campus health centers and medical schools in immediate and quantifiable ways. Young people, for example, will now be able to stay on their parents’ healthcare plans until they are 26.
 
Ari A. Matusiak, co-founder of Young Invincibles (a youth campaign for health care reform), stated that the bill provides support for recent graduates in search of a career who “might have opted to take jobs they didn’t want, paid high premiums for individual or COBRA health plans, or gone uninsured. Now, at least for those whose parents are insured, there’s the option to stay on that plan.”

In addition, colleges and universities will still be able to offer their students insurance plans.

“In the end, the bill that passed … includes ACHA’s original intention," stated Jim Turner president of the American College Health Association (ACHA), and the director of student health at the University of Virginia. "Our advocacy to make sure that colleges and universities can still offer health insurance plans appears to be intact and we’re very pleased by that.”
 
Turner recalls that in January it appeared that some student health insurance plans were at risk. Certain drafts of the health care bill considered by the Senate Finance Committee and House of Representatives did not address the unique nature of school sponsored plans and could have put them at risk. 
 
The Senate Finance Committee explained the unintentional omission to Turner and other ACHA representatives, reporting that, “there had never been any intent to interrupt student health insurance.”

The Government Accountability Office reported that during the 2007-2008 academic year, 71 percent of four-year independent nonprofit colleges, 82 percent of four-year public institutions and 29 percent of two-year public institutions offered student insurance plans.
 
Larry McNeely, healthcare reform advocate for the U.S Public Interest Research Group, foresees potential benefits of this provision for universities as employers. He reasons that because parents’ insurance plans are typically superior to student plans, universities will significantly decrease expenditures on health care. 
 
The Business Roundtable also estimates that by 2019 universities and colleges will save as much as $3,000 per employee in health costs. McNeely reasons that would leave “more money for financial aid and faculty salaries.”
 
Major impacts on medical education and training are also anticipated. Allopathic and osteopathic medical schools are campaigning to expand enrollments as the demand for doctors is expected to increase.
 
Included in the reform plan is Title VII Health Professions Education program. The program offers financial support to students in an effort to diversify health professionals racially, ethnically and geographically. The National Service Health Corps, an organization which assists doctors working in underserved communities, will also receive more funding.
 
However, advocates for medical colleges remain concerned that the reforms did not address the need to expand graduate-level medical education and that the cap on residency positions available for medical school graduates will be insufficient to accommodate the expanding workforce, especially considering the large number of uninsured Americans.
 
“We’ve been urging Congress to eliminate the caps, to allow us to increase our residency training programs,” Christiane Mitchell, director of federal affairs for the Association of Medical Colleges, said. “But they didn’t.”

Others worry that the bill will have more negative consequences than positive. The website GoCollege.com lists five reasons that the bill might end up costing students and society more than it saves. The website argues that the costs of launching a new lending program in the federal government will get passed on to students. It also warns against vilifying the “corporate middleman” and inadvertently blocking funding streams to non-profits that rely on the current loan system.

Conservatives are lashing back at the bill, and some are moving forward with legal action. Virginia’s Liberty University announced its plan to file a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the legislation, and Republican Delegate Kathy Byron has signed on to the suit as well.

The bill’s supporters remain unruffled. Darrel G. Kitch, president of the Association of Medical Colleges, said, "Medical schools and teaching hospitals have expressed their full support for this bill to President Obama, and now stand ready to work with the administration and Congress to implement these significant changes to our health care delivery system."


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