Our 20-year-old daughter has been attending college full-time since graduating from high school. She just announced that she wants to take this upcoming semester off to work full-time, but she will be returning to school in January.

Will her coverage end immmediately, or is there some sort of grace period that might extend her coverage to the point at which she is back in school?

We're really tearing our hair out over this one... she needs to re-register for her classes immediately, if that is what it takes to keep her insurance coverage intact.

Thanks for any input.

Are you insured on a group plan through work? If so, does your employer have more than 20 employees?
If they do, your daughter could elect to go on Cobra as she is losing dependent status by quitting school. Cobra last for 18 months. Now she (you) will be responsible for paying the entire premium, but she would at least have coverage. As for the grace period it depends on your plan. I have seen cases where a dependent no longer goes to school full time, goes to the doctor only to find out the insurance company requests full-time student verifcation. When it can't be verified, they deny the claim based on fact the dependent is no longer eligible. I personally have never seen a grace period.

Thanks for your response. Coincidentally, our family's insurance coverage is through COBRA. We enrolled May 1, after my husband left his former job to take on a consulting job that didn't offer any health benefits. Maybe our daughter could enroll in COBRA as a single person. (Yikes, we're already paying $1100 a month for our family coverage! :eek: )

What I'm confused about is that as of January, our daughter will be back in school on a full-time basis, so we're only talking about a little over a four-month period when she would not be attending school. A lot of kids these days take semesters off, so this can't be a new scenario for insurance companies.

One thought that came to our minds today was that of inquiring of her school as to whether they might have some sort of policy that would classify her as "officially" enrolled, or matriculating, but on a "leave of absence". Our daughter is going to check with her academic advisor; I'll also look into this idea tomorrow by contacting the Dean of Students' office.

Thank you again for your interest.