• Students enrolled in Massachusetts colleges and universities must have health insurance.heart attack image by JASON WINTER from Fotolia.com
  
  As of May 2009, more than half a million students attended one of the 191 degree-granting colleges in Massachusetts. Beginning in 1989, Massachusetts state law required all of students to have health insurance either through the student health program at their institution of higher education or through a comparable plan. The requirement pertains to full- or part-time students enrolled in a certificate, diploma or degree-granting program in a college, university or other institution of higher education. A part-time student is defined for the purposes of this requirement as a student taking at least 75 percent of a full-time class load.
  
  

Insurance Coverage Required

• The state of Massachusetts sets the minimum level of benefits and services that a student's health insurance plan must cover. These include "reasonably comprehensive" coverage that encompasses preventive and primary care, emergency services, hospitalization, outpatient services, and mental health services. The insurance carrier must include all of the benefits and services required by the Massachusetts Division of Insurance. And the plan must pay at least $50,000 in benefits for each physical or mental illness or accident and have a deductible of not more than $250 per year.
  
  

Student Health Plan

• A student must purchase the student health plan provided by her school, or must prove that she has, through an employer, parent or spouse, a different health plan with coverage comparable to the one offered by her school. The fee for the school's health plan is automatically added to the student's tuition bill and must be paid unless the school grants a waiver.
  
  

Obtaining a Waiver

• It is the student's responsibility to prove that his alternate health care plan is comparable to the one offered through his school. If it is, he may apply for a waiver from the requirement that he buy the plan offered by the school. A health plan that would limit the student's options to a specific network of doctors and hospitals not local to his school, and that would as a result offer the student only emergency care, is not a comparable plan, and so the student would not be given a waiver. The student's school is not required to issue a waiver even if the student has a comparable health plan, but may require that the student enroll in the plan offered by the school.
  
  

Excluded Students

• The health insurance requirement does not apply to students enrolled in an online program of study at a Massachusetts institution of higher education, nor does it apply to students enrolled only in courses for which they will receive no credits (for example, if a student will receive only a certificate of participation for the course or courses).