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Preeti on the Web |
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Providing Food for Thought |
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In January, Duke will be negotiating the terms of next school year’s student health insurance plan. Now is the time to provide your input to GPSC at gpsc@duke.edu. |
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My two cents on Duke’s student health insurance plan |
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November 30, 2005 |
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To Contact Preeti: preetiontheweb at yahoo dot com |
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Please note that all text on this webpage is copyrighted ©. Please do not quote or paraphrase without using proper citations. |
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Note: This op-ed column appeared in The Chronicle Nov. 30, 2005. Are you overweight? Do you smoke? Are you female? Do you take prescription drugs? Are you a spouse? Are you a parent? Do you have any chronic medical conditions such as allergies? Are you old? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’re expensive. Your healthcare costs are, on average, higher than the costs of those who answered “no.” This issue of being “expensive” emerged at the Nov. 21 GPSC meeting during a presentation on Duke’s student health insurance plan. Currently, single students subsidize those with families. To illustrate: During the 2003-2004 academic year, single students paid $1,063 for health insurance but only rang up an average of $757 in medical costs. Meanwhile, students with families paid $2,282 for insurance but rang up an average of $4,773 in medical costs. In January, the University will begin negotiating the terms of next school year’s insurance plan. GPSC is interested in feedback from graduate and professional students about the current plan, which has its merits. Customer service is excellent. If you get sick, you’re covered wherever you are in the world. You can see whichever physicians you want, even if they’re not in the plan’s network. The $100 deductible and $1,000 coinsurance maximum are reasonable. But let’s go back to the issue of families. I support a generous subsidy for spouses and children. Most of us here at Duke have been—or currently are—on our parents’ insurance plans, so we’ve likely benefited from this type of subsidy. Plus, most of today’s single students will one day have families of their own. Now is hardly the time to set a precedent for families to pay even higher health insurance costs. And as goody-two-shoes Lisa Simpson says, “Children are our most valuable natural resource.” They’re a positive externality that benefits us all, even childless people. As adults, they’ll pay our social security checks, fatten our retirement portfolios and provide the human capital that keeps our economy humming along. While family subsidization is important, the issue that elicited the most visible reactions at the meeting was the proposal for tiered plans in which older students would pay more than younger students. Older students are more likely to have health problems, so it seems “fair” that they should pay more than younger ones. But G&P students tend to be older—hence all the murmurs and whispers I heard when tiered plans were proposed. Aside from subsidization, there are other issues that GPSC and Duke administrators should consider when negotiating the terms of next school year’s insurance plan. First, it’s shocking that the plan does not cover routine physical exams. It’s common knowledge that preventative care is one of the most highly effective ways to reduce healthcare costs. Yes, students can get physicals from random employees at Student Health Services, but that’s not the same as getting them from their trusted family physicians with whom they have established comfortable rapports over many years. Worse yet, spouses have zero coverage for routine exams since they can’t even resort to Student Health. Children can get well-child visits up to age six, but no other physicals are covered. Granted, the plan covers limited forms of preventative care such as gynecological exams and prostate screenings, but people have body parts other than their genitals. Meanwhile, emergency room visits have been one of the factors contributing to the rapidly rising cost of Duke’s insurance plan. Correlation isn’t causation, but the lack of coverage for routine physical exams has got to make you wonder. Duke’s insurance negotiators should also determine what safeguards are in place to ensure that students aren’t overcharged. I myself was recently overcharged for prescription drugs. The pharmacist at Student Health told me that Merck Medco Prescriptions—the prescription management company the student insurance plan uses—had a system problem in September. Many students were overcharged. I called Hill, Chesson and Woody, the agency through which Duke obtains its student plan, and was told by Jeff Powell, one of the agents there, that just under 100 students were affected. Reimbursement checks, Powell explained, are in the process of being mailed. Of course, my name didn’t appear on the initial report, which makes me wonder how many other students may have been missed. At any rate, the health insurance plan can only serve your needs if make them known. GPSC is soliciting feedback through Dec. 15 to prepare for January’s negotiations. Email gpsc@duke.edu. |
