The ACA prohibits businesses from providing subsidies to employees specifically for the purpose of purchasing health insurance from “individual market plans”.
Many student health insurance plans are considered to be “individual market plans” and graduate TAs and RAs are classified as employees by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS has ruled that institutions of higher education are employers subject to this ruling and as such cannot provide subsidies to their graduate students.
Graduate and professional students should not be forced to pay out-of-pocket for insurance that was previously included in their acceptance package. We would urge the IRS to consider an exception to IRS Notice 2013-54 for graduate and professional students.