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10/13/2008 Fall Term

Health Insurance: Graduate

As one of the ways that we provide support, the full cost of individual health insurance is covered for all Whiting School post-doctoral fellows and Whiting School full-time resident degree-seeking graduate students if they elect to use the university-sponsored health insurance coverage.  Domestic post-doctoral fellows and domestic graduate students retain the right to waive the University-sposored coverage, but they must provide evidence of a comparable policy (more information about that can be found here). International students are required to enroll in the University-sponsored plan so that we can ensure sufficient local coverage.

Subsidies for health insurance will come from a number of sources such as the Dean's Office, the student's department, sponsored grants agencies, and other external funding sources. This will appear on the Student Account as the mandatory fee, but, again, the student will not be expected to pay it.

Who Pays the Mandatory Fee?

On the recommendation of the WSE departments, the Dean's Office may grant a tuition fellowship covering a significant fraction of graduate student tuition. The remaining tuition balance is paid by a variety of sources. Unless the student is covering the remaining tuition, these sources will be responsible for paying the mandatory health insurance fee. Here are all of the possible scenarios:

• If the remaining tuition balance is paid by a sponsored research grant or by the student's department (as the case may be for research or teaching assistants), either the sponsoring agency or the department will pay this fee.
• If the remaining tuition balance is paid by an external funding source (such as an external fellowship, a corporation, or the student's home country), that funding source will be responsible for this fee.
• In some instances, an internal Whiting School graduate fellowship will include health insurance, and this will be paid by the Dean's Office (e.g., Wolman fellowship, GEM fellowship).
• If the student's remaining tuition balance is not paid by any of the above sources and becomes his/her responsibility, the Dean's Office will pay the mandatory fee.