Catholic college dropping student health-insurance plan over contraception mandate - Columbus Dispatch

A Catholic university in eastern Ohio is ending health-insurance coverage for students in response to a much-debated federal mandate.

Ohio Dominican and Mount Carmel College of Nursing, Catholic schools in central Ohio, already don't provide health insurance for students, spokeswomen at the colleges said on Wednesday.

Catholic-affiliated institutions across the country are challenging a mandate in the federal health-care law that requires insurance plans to provide coverage for contraception — including birth-control pills, sterilization and the so-called morning-after pill, which many conservatives view as an abortion-inducing drug.

Franciscan University in Steubenville announced last month that, because of the new rule, it no longer will offer a student health-insurance plan, beginning in the fall. The skyrocketing cost of the plan, also because of mandates, was another factor, spokesman Tom Sofio said yesterday. About 200 of the school's 2,500 students are enrolled in the voluntary plan.

Whether church institutions will stop providing health-insurance coverage in opposition to the mandate has become a common topic in Catholic circles, said John C. Green, the director of the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

"This is the first example I have heard of," he said, referring to Franciscan University. "It's possible this could become very widespread if the current mandate stands."

Sofio said Franciscan's health-insurance plan for employees will continue, but it will face the same situation in August 2013, when the mandate goes into effect unless challenges are successful.

At Ohio Dominican, officials said employee-insurance plans already include coverage for contraceptives. The school says state law requires insurance companies to provide basic health services, including "medically necessary, voluntary family-planning services." The policy is under review, and no changes have been made.

"We recognize the importance of providing family-planning services, which include physical examinations, prenatal care and well-child care, among many other services," the university said in a statement. "All insurance providers available to us at this time must provide medically necessary family-planning services in their coverage plans, and those family-planning services, as defined by the law, include contraceptive coverage."

Employee health-insurance policies provided by Mount Carmel Health do not cover birth control, and doctors at facilities owned by the health system do not perform sterilizations unless medically necessary, the school said. Officials said in a statement that it is unclear how the federal regulations will affect the health system's policies.

jviviano@dispatch.com

18 May, 2012