Dear Members,
Briefly, this year our recommendation of Health Insurance for student/scholar is ICS Plan A ($370 for group), International Community Service. For student/scholar plus spouse, our recommendation is Rice Plan B ($2072)or ICS Plan A ($1488).
Following are links about the complete results. But before you click that, I'd like to remind you that all those are made by just several people, although we tried to include more people's suggestion. Hence there may exist some unintentional faults. So, before you decide to buy which plan, I would like to suggest that you read policy carefully, and it's totally your responsibility to buy which kind of insurance.
This project is mainly done by Zhiyong Wang, Zhongping Jian. Here we'd like to thank Ping Tao, Juan Wang, and Weiqing Yee for useful suggestion and discussion. We also thank Bin Gong, Guoquan Chen for kind help.
ICS link: http://www.icsweb.org/ICS2001_2002/
We choose ICS mainly because of its competitive rate of quality to price. Compared with other companies, the quality/price of ICS plan A is the highest, to our knowledge. Although I was told some bad experience about this plan, there were also much good feeling toward the company. If you feel confidence in your health, buying insurance being just for registration and/or in case of illness, we strongly recommend this to you.
Rice Link: Rice sent its policy just not long ago to all students, please refer to it for detail. http://dacnet.rice.edu/Services/Health/
The major reason to choose Rice is its quality. If you are not sure about your health, we'd like to introduce this to you.
PSI link ($468 for student): I don't know if anyone is still interested in it. Here is the link: http://www.psiservice.com/
Following is about ICS, if you are interested in buying it, please go on reading. If not, you can stop here.
As you might notice, our waiver application due date is Aug. 10, and our registration due date is Aug. 15, hence there is no much time left for us to buy insurance and fill in the waiver form. So, if you decide to buy ICS plan A and want to get its group rate ($14 less than regualr rate, you can see it from http://www.icsweb.org/ICS2001_2002/rates.htm), please do as I write:
1) Read carefully about the policy http://www.icsweb.org/ICS2001_2002/
2)If you think it's good and decide to buy it, go to: http://www.icsweb.org/ICS2001_2002/ics_form.htm print it and fill in it.
Fill the "My ICS Coordinator Identification Number (CIN) is | | | | | " with 1022.
You can't enroll online if you want to get the group rate(please refer to following forwarded message they sent to me.
3) After you finish filling the form, please envolop it, since there will be your personal information and your credit card information.
4) Because we have no much time left, please send the envelop to Mr. Guoquan Chen, ext. #2520, Cox building (MEMS Dept.) room #218 before 3:00PM, next Monday, Aug. 6, and I will send it out that day. Please do it exactly as I said. You don't need to put a stamp on your envelop, but if you like, you can drop a quarter there as postage.
Thanks for your patience and I sincerely hope everyone has a good, healthy year.
-Zhongping Jian
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If you buy ICS Plan A, you can fill in the Rice Medical Insurance Waiver Form in this way:
INSURANCE COMPANY NAME: Insurance for Students, Inc.
ADDRESS:
POLICY NUMBER: 214-007-002P
GROUP NUMBER: This is the only place we can't know before we get our ID card, but from PSI last year's ID card, the group # is the same as the Policy #, so I think you can still put 214-007-002P here. Or, you can fill in your last-year's insurance information first. After you get your new ID card from ICS, you can change it.
PHONE NUMBER: 1-800-356-1235
NAME OF POLICY HOLDER: International Community Service, Inc.
ADDRESS OF POLICY HOLDER:
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Following is the message from ICS:
From: I4CS@aol.com [mailto:I4CS@aol.com]
To: zpjian@rice.edu
Subject: Re: Inquiry about health insurance
Per our agreement with the insurance company, everything concerning group rates must be done and can only be done exactly as instructed on the web. Thanks for your understanding. //ICS