LETTER: Required health insurance unfair

To the editor:

My roommate Wednesday night started reading me the latest article about mandatory health care for all USU students. After he put in his two cents, I read the article for myself.

I think Maure Smith and Jim Davis bring up some very important points that we must look closely at in order to make the best decision, as they put it “[looking] at the benefit for the majority and mitigate the problems for the

minority.”

Jim Davis explained that having mandatory health insurance would help increase retention and help keep students healthy. I have to agree that students aren’t learning much when they are stuck in a hospital bed due to some injury.

What I have a hard time accepting is the continuous mention of making it fair for the majority. Mr. Davis stated in the mentioned article, “Students…are risk takers. They aren’t quite ready to take responsibility on their own so mandates come into play.” He continues his remark by asking if a student were to get ill, who does the student expect will pay for it?

Mr. Davis has a good point. We can’t expect others to pay for our stupidity. That wouldn’t be “fair”. So, what he asserts is make each student pay for health insurance to cover those that do irresponsible things. Wait a second…did I understand that correctly? We can’t expect others to pay for our own stupidity, so we are going to require everyone to pay for health insurance in order to cover the costs incurred by our risky mistakes. Hmmm, I might be wrong but that seems somewhat contradictory to me.

I think they need to give us a little more credit. We may be young and inexperienced in life, but I personally don’t know many of my peers that wake up every morning and ask themselves, “What can I do today to get hurt?”

The costs of health insurance are going up, and adding this extra fee would in fact decrease retention at the university in my opinion. Jim Davis claims that financial aid will be able to be used to help cover the costs. Where does the money to support financial aid come from? The taxpayers, of course. Oh, and those students that can’t get financial aid? They are just going to have to work extra jobs. Plus they are going to be taxed and that money will help pay for

another student’s health insurance.

Health insurance, according to Jim Davis, isn’t as expensive and inconvenient as we make it out to be. He claims that students aren’t willing to pay the costs of health care; however, we students “have resources to buy pizza and books.”

Maybe we don’t take health care as seriously as should. Then again, we are at the stage of our lives that we are unable to make responsible choices for ourselves. Perhaps we should have mandates that tell us what color of socks we must wear because we are that helpless. As for the seemingly low cost; show me where I can get a $5 Hot ‘N Ready health insurance policy and I will be the first one to sign up.

Justin Potter