GUEST COLUMN: Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by at USU
USU students have seen the price of tuition go up from year to year, but $2,100 has got to be a record. If USU adopts a mandatory student health insurance policy, then that is how much every uninsured student will pay on top of tuition and fees each year.
ASUSU subcommittees are currently debating whether to recommend a hard waiver on health insurance to the USU administration. Under a hard waiver policy, any student who doesn’t have proof of a health insurance plan comparable to the university’s plan will be required to purchase coverage under the university plan before registering for classes.
The current cost of being covered under the university health insurance plan is about $2,100, but many students will never have to pay it. Perhaps the majority of students are still on their parents’ insurance policies. For them, simply a proof of being insured will be all that is required before they can start figuring out whether they’ll finally be able to fit in that fly fishing course next semester. But for many students, especially married students, this policy could present some major problems.
Most insurance policies cover children that are single and under age 25. Once students get married, they are generally no longer covered under parents’ policies. For many of them, insurance is something they want, but cannot afford. When an already financially strained couple is faced with dropping an additional $4,000 a year for health insurance, even being able to stay in school will become a question.
Proponents of a mandatory health insurance policy say a mandatory plan will lower health insurance prices for everyone. It probably will, but we have to ask ourselves whether it will lower prices significantly.
If student health insurance becomes mandatory, prices will not drop the first year. From the experience of other schools that have adopted a mandatory insurance plan, we know prices will take at least a year to respond to the increased customer base. So every student currently on the plan, as well as every student forced to join it, can count on forking out at least $2,100 for the first year.
As the pool of students in the plan increases, prices will gradually decrease, eventually dropping 10 percent, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent. How much it will drop depends on how many students join the policy. If students choose other plans over the school’s plan, it may never drop at all.
Let’s say it does eventually fall 20 percent to $1,700. For the student who couldn’t afford it originally at $2,100, is this really going to make all that much of a difference? Probably not. Look at it this way – for the married couple earning $6.50 an hour, paying for health insurance will take nearly 600 hours of work a year. That’s four months working full time. Try fitting that on top of 16 credits and 30 hours of work a week.
We also have to ask ourselves, even if the mandatory plan makes the prices drop, is that a good enough reason to force everyone to buy coverage? Does it merit taking away students’ right to choose what to do with their money? I really don’t think so. As important as health insurance is, that doesn’t mean it should be made mandatory for everyone. We all agree that eating vegetables is important, but who wants it to be mandatory for us to buy one serving of vegetables each time we buy at the Marketplace?
Furthermore, Utah State students have already paid for medical care at the Health and Wellness Center. Students can go there for most general health problems and be well taken care of. Doctor visits there are already completely covered by student fees so the only costs are for lab work and prescriptions. Students can almost always get same-day appointments and the staff is extremely capable.
I can’t emphasize enough how important health insurance is, but even so, let’s allow people to decide what to do with their own money. If ASUSU wants to perform a service, they can educate and encourage students to purchase health insurance instead of driving away students who can’t afford it. If the tuition hikes in the past years have chased away prospective students, imagine what a $2,100 rate hike will do.
Don’t let this policy go into effect without having your say. Twenty-one hundred dollars a year is too great a price for apathy! E-mail Maure Smith at gss@usu.edu to join the Student Health Advisory Committee. It doesn’t require much time and you’ll be able to learn a lot about health care and have a say in where your money goes. Or, e-mail Student Advocate Josh Schultz at jjschultz@cc.usu.edu.
Joseph Sheppard is a student in the department of journalism and communications. Comments can be sent to jks@cc.usu.edu.