The saga of student group insurance is gaining ground. A class action lawsuit was filed in Superior Court last week. Desjardins and the Alliance for Student Health in Quebec (ASEQ) are targeted.
The application was filed on June 7 on behalf of a law student at the University of Montreal and all university and CEGEP students who have been enrolled in their institutions’ medical and dental insurance plans.
According to the class action claim, the current “opt-out” formula, where students are automatically enrolled in an insurance policy, is causing harm. Instead, we propose the “opt-in” formula, where registration would be done only at the request of the student. Many other issues are raised, including that Desjardins may have access to the principal applicant’s personal information without his consent.
“In my view, by the time my client brought this to my attention, it was obvious that it was illegal,” the attorney behind the request, Joey Zukran, said in a phone interview. The solution he offers? That a “pop-up” offering insurance appears when paying, instead of automatically adding the fee to the student bill.
Spokesperson for ASEQ, a third party acting as a broker between insurance providers and student associations, Marc-André Ross asserted that the lawyer behind the class action lawsuit was “fishing with dynamite by going after insurance plans used by hundreds of thousands of people.”
The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) reportedly assured ASEQ on several occasions that it would no longer touch the “opt-in” or “opt-out” mechanism. “They understood that students like these insurance plans very much and that these plans are used a lot,” said the ASEQ spokesperson. According to Marc-André Ross, if the regime became “opt-in”, it would be discriminatory since it would be based on individual characteristics such as gender, nationality or genetic background of the individual.
Desjardins emailed La Presse a statement stating that the group insurance offered to students through their student association was “a product widely used and appreciated by students for over 25 years.” According to spokesman Jean-Benoît Turcotti, the allegations are “without foundation”. “We will rectify the allegations made and challenge the remedy for the preservation of student rights and benefits,” Turcotti added.
This saga is not new. La Presse pointed out, in 2020, that students were paying for insurance that they did not really need. In the majority of higher education institutions in Quebec, medical and dental insurance costs are automatically billed to students at the beginning of the year. If the latter do not expressly waive it, they are registered for the full year.
In addition, many students or parents do not know that this insurance is optional or simply do not know that it exists.
The AMF then demanded that membership no longer be automatic (therefore no longer “opt-out”). Desjardins reacted by saying that it was not going to renew the contracts that give it 95% of the student group insurance market in Quebec. “In my view, this statement is an out-of-court admission that they need to defraud students for the system to continue to exist,” attorney Joey Zukran said in a phone interview.
At the time, student associations had expressed their dissatisfaction with the initial position of the AMF and the reaction of Desjardins. “We think that if it was opt-in, the prices would be much higher,” commented Laurence Mallette-Léonard, president of the Quebec Collegiate Student Federation. Alecsandre Sauvé-Lacoursière, secretary general of FAÉCUM, also favors the “opt-out” formula.
The AMF finally reversed its decision and launched a public consultation in the summer of 2022. Desjardins has never stopped offering these insurance plans.
Contacted by La Presse, the AMF declined to comment on the class action request. However, the AMF confirms that it suspended its decision in response to the concerns of student associations. The public consultation period ended on October 17, 2022. The AMF is preparing a final report.