Even after two administrators addressed graduate students’ worries about the University Health Center’s switch to third-party billing, several students said the talk did little to allay their concerns.
Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement and health center Director Sacared Bodison addressed the Graduate Student Government during its weekly meeting on March 4 about the health center’s new plan, which will enable students to directly charge their health insurance companies for on-campus services. The plan — which is set to debut in the fall — has been met with contention by graduate students who said last month they were not given enough specifics to make health-care plans by next semester.
And while Clement and Bodison discussed how the billing switch will affect students and opened the floor to comments and concerns, some graduate student leaders said it wasn’t enough.
GSG President Anna Bedford said she wished the two administrators had more information to give, noting there are still many unanswered questions administrators ignored before pushing the new system into place — including not knowing how many graduate students are uninsured, how many use the health center and what services for which they use the health center.
“Personally, I’m very happy that they came to the assembly and that they’re sharing what they know, but I think it’s a shame that they don’t know any more,” said Bedford. “I would have liked if the administration had done more research on how it would affect graduate students.”
Under third-party billing, the health center will directly bill any insurance company that accepts the students’ coverage — but officials are quick to say that may not be all companies. According to Bodison, large providers such as Medicaid and Kaiser Permanente will not accept the university’s third-party system and students will have to seek services elsewhere or pay the full price.
For students who don’t have insurance, the cost of visiting the health center will rise substantially — the current visit fee will increase from $15 to $70 by the fall.
Bodison stressed, however, that reduced prices will be available to students without insurance who can demonstrate financial need.
“We also will have special prices for students with no insurance,” Bodison said. “We will try and price [services] better for them.”
Bodison and Clement said the billing switch is necessary to preserve funding for academics. For instance, in times of economic hardship, they said, the health center was prepared to alter its billing process and save money.
“They wanted to divert more funds to the academic side,” Bodison said. “They decided the health center could be funded in a different manner.”
According to Clement, the university is counting on the system change to generate a $500,000 surplus in its first year. However, she gave the estimate cautiously and said it wasn’t a certainty.
Despite these expected savings, many graduate students said they were worried the new system would leave students without insurance behind — the university’s health-care coverage, which is offered to students who don’t have private coverage for $1,282 a year, could be cut altogether or made more expensive under the new plan because third-party billing generates additional costs for the health center.
A survey for graduate students designed to help officials better understand their health-care needs is currently in the works, but Bedford said she felt the survey should have come before final decisions on changes were made.
“I was encouraged to hear there might be a fund to help uninsured grad students; that was the first I’d heard of that,” Bedford said. “But it seems like a lot of details need to be worked out.”
GSG Vice President of Financial Affairs Stefanie Sherrill said she appreciated the concern both administrators demonstrated.
“For those concerns they weren’t able to immediately address, they seemed to take a good deal of concern for answering them in the near future,” she said. “I believe they will use the survey they discussed as a way to get a more clear account of how graduate students will be affected from these changes.”
And though officials are working to solidify specifics of the change, Bodison said it probably wouldn’t have been necessary if the recession hadn’t occurred.
“I think the economy has driven this change,” she said. “If the economy were not in its current state we would have probably not had a change,” Bodison said.
As for the future of the health center, Clement is hoping for the best.
“We’re hoping that more money won’t be taken out of the health center in the future,” Clement said.
farrell at umdbk dot com
