WEST LAFAYETTE — For most students, their time at college is the first significant stint away from home. On-campus services exist to ease this transition for students and offer access to the support and care a student might receive while living at home.
At Purdue University, the Purdue University Student Health Center (PUSH) is one of these services and exists as a convenient and expedient way for students to meet their immediate and long-term healthcare needs.
For Purdue students like Martasia Carter, however, this convenience doesn’t exist.
Martasia is an undergraduate student at Purdue and she’s working her way through college. She is also on Medicaid, which makes it more difficult and costly to receive services from PUSH.
While PUSH would never turn away a Medicaid patient, and all PUSH visits are at no charge to a full-time enrolled student, PUSH is not able to bill Medicaid for lab work or further treatment for students, Brian Zink, senior director of news and information at Purdue, said.
This means that should a student on Medicaid receive these services they would pay the entire cost out of pocket.
“Over the past two years, Medicaid changed its rules to require all providers who order laboratory, radiology or pharmacy services to be Medicaid credentialed, making it more difficult for students who need these additional services,” Zink said.