Health insurance is currently mandatory at 11 UNC schools and will be for all 16 of them, including UNCW, by the fall of 2010.

The UNC system is looking for an insurance provider and will start taking bids this fall.

Director of UNCW's student health center Katrin Wesner says even students who eat and sleep well may still need expensive health care.

"A lot of things we see are injuries based on activities people are participating in or skateboard, surfboard injuries, bicycle injuries. No matter how good care you take of yourself, those things can happen to anybody."

Wesner says between 10 and 15 percent of UNCW students are currently uninsured.

Do you have insight or expertise on this topic? Please e-mail us, we'd like to hear from you. news@whqr.org.

© Copyright 2010, whqr