Hi. I'm the NELC ABD who blogged my life-story here last January. I'm begging those of you in SOSHI who are in the Chicago area and can carry on this fight: PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T GO INTO HIBERNATION!!! Last year's decision by Soc Sci and Hum meant that in my department, incoming students with fellowships of $10,000 or more get health insurance.
Literally that's maybe 4 or 5 people. So much for the other nearly 20 other students who probably enrolled. And so much for the many dozens of hard-working students who have proven themselves over and over again for years and have NEVER had financial support and are battling it out for fellowships and working who knows how many jobs to try to make ends meet long enough to finish a dissertation. And believe me, very few of the incoming students without funding have any idea how their U of C grad education is going cost them 3, 5, 7 years down the road. No one is there at the end of each quarter to give you a reality check; no one is ever there to tell you that when you're finally ABD in 2010, you can expect to pay X thousands of dollars a year for tuition, fees, and health insurance. There's no transparency in this system, and that's only where our disgust should begin.
If I were in Chicago I'd be pleading with you in person: PLEASE DON'T LET THEM OFF THIS EASILY!!! They don't deserve it, and we deserve better. Yes, there's been a victory. But it was such a small and easy concession for the University. It can't stop here, it just can't.
Aside from the Health Insurance issue, there's another issue I think you should be aware of. I'm attaching below a letter that I desperately mailed around to all kinds of University officials last Spring. A few weeks after I sent my blog to this site, my mother suffered a near-fatal stroke and my husband and I had to come rushing home from Jordan. This letter will illustrate to you what happened when I tried to take a Leave of Absence to take care of family. It's only a matter of time before this happens to someone else.
6 May, 2005
To Selected Members of the U of C Community:
I am writing this letter to bring your attention to the hardship which a certain policy regarding students in Advanced Residency recently caused my husband, Joey, and me and to urge you to revisit and change this policy.
On February 4th we returned to Pennsylvania from Jordan where we have been researching our dissertations because my mother had a near-fatal stroke. For 10 days she remained in critical condition. When all was said and done, she would spend three weeks in various ICU’s and seven weeks in a nursing home. She is still undergoing nine hours of outpatient rehabilitation per week. My father works full time, I am an only child, and there are no other family members or friends who could have assisted in this situation.
One of the first things I did in making arrangements to leave Jordan was to notify my department and my division. I was told not to worry. So my husband and I were utterly blown away when we were notified, on the evening before our registration for Spring Quarter was due, that as we were in Advanced Residency, we would not be allowed to take a Leave of Absence and we would be required to pay $677 each ($1354 total) in tuition. Likewise we feared that our overseas medical insurance would no longer cover us, which would mean enrollment under bloody Chickering, at a cost of another $1104 each for coverage until the end of September. I pleaded with my department and my division that we just didn’t have the money, nor was taking out even more loans to finance our U of C education a viable option. We are two ABD’s with scary amounts of educational loans living, for this year, on one person’s grants; I was between grants when my mom took ill and had to suspend my Fulbright-Hays before I had even begun it (i.e. before I had received my first check). We thus had no source of income and if we were indeed required to pay so much money to the U of C this term, we would be forced to withdraw—our financial situation was indeed that serious. My pleas were met within my division by a complete lack of productive answers. It was clear from the few terse e-mails that my husband and I received that, in fact, our division was flat-out refusing to enter into any dialogue on the matter; I was merely given cold instructions as to how we would withdraw. With our division seemingly leaving us out in the cold, we nearly lost all hope when we realized that there was absolutely nothing our department and those individuals in it who were our staunchest advocates could do for us except to lend sympathetic ears and assure us that we were within our rights to demand more of the University of Chicago under the circumstances.
I find it impossible to put into words how that felt and how it hurt. I can’t tell you how many angry tears were shed over the next several days, how many times we asked “why,” how our plans for the future fell into total disarray, how often we wondered whether we had any future at the U of C at all, and if this might spell the end of everything for which had worked so hard. Why, we wondered, are students in Scholastic Residence allowed to take a Leave of Absence while students in Advanced Residence are not unless they themselves are incapacitated? Are family emergencies such as illness, injury, and death only supposed to occur when one is in Scholastic Residence? How can the University, overwhelmingly populated with graduate students, a population with aging parents, with spouses, children, and domestic partners who depend upon them, deny these students a request for a Leave of Absence to care for these loved ones when they are needed most? And simply because they are working on dissertations and not taking classes? Could and would the University deny such a request to an employee? How could the University demand of a student population already under heavy financial pressures that it simply “pay up” during times of even greater financial uncertainty and severe emotional distress? How can the great University of Chicago treat its students in this manner? I can’t tell you how embittering it was, that with my father a wreck, my mother in a nursing home learning to do everything all over again, our lives and our finances so unsure and on hold for who knew how long, that this was the best the University could do for two Ph.D. candidates in good standing. Our darkest hour had just become that much darker.
Luckily, a few things then happened that finally managed to inject some hope into the situation. First of all, we got in touch with Victor Muniz-Fratricelli of the Ombudsperson’s Office and he began to get wheels turning for us. Secondly, it turned out that our insurance company was far more flexible than our university; our coverage would continue until the end date of our current policy, even though we had returned to the States in violation of that policy (“These things happen,” the representative said.). Finally, we were put in touch with Dean Martina Munsters.
In the middle of April we came to Chicago for a couple of days to get matters straightened out. While at this point we knew we wouldn’t have to come up with the money for insurance, we were still without a source of income and I assure you that $677 is a substantial sum of money even in good times, especially when there are two of you. We met both with Mr. Muniz-Fratricelli and Ms. Munsters. It was clear that Mr. Muniz-Fratricelli had been working very hard on our case, meeting with several administrators on our behalf and finally providing us with answers to our questions. It was likewise apparent that Dean Munsters and Deputy Provost Roth had taken our situation very seriously and had spent a very long time learning the history behind the policy that now threatened us and trying to determine if they could come up with a solution that would get us out of this ridiculous situation. Joey and I are extremely grateful to these individuals for their sincerity, their time, their concern, and their patience with us during this period when our most negative emotions were running so high and were so unanimously channeled against the University of Chicago.
I had prepared myself, before going into these meetings, that the outcome probably wouldn’t be so good, and that we would probably leave the meetings still owing a lot of money. And that is exactly what happened. What we had not known, however (and had this been suggested to us a month earlier when registration was due, a lot of panic and emotion could have been avoided), was that we could set up a payment plan with the Bursar’s Office and pay the $1354 as late as mid-September, giving us time to come up with the money. This is what we have done, and we are utterly relieved.
We still take great exception, however, to the absurd policy that got us here in the first place, perhaps moreso now that it has been explained to us in detail. I concede that I understand the path which led the committee that decided upon the policy down this road some six years ago. No, for too many reasons to discuss here, you can’t have Ph.D. candidates—with good excuses or without excuses--vanishing for years on end, perhaps forever and without a trace, perhaps to resurface after two decades. But in light of what has happened to us, it really seems as if the University went way too far--letting the exceptions dictate the rules and tossing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. It is appalling enough that I, my parents’ only child, couldn’t take a Leave of Absence to tend to an ill parent, but it is downright scandalous that, had something happened to Joey or to me, or if we had a child and something happened to that child, the same rule applies. Frankly, it is shocking that the committee that came to this conclusion regarding Leave of Absence did so because the issue of who qualifies as family worthy of leave-granting became too complicated and because it didn’t want to put anyone in the situation of having to determine who gets Leave of Absence on a case-by-case basis. While such a conclusion—a one-size-fits-all policy--may be easy, callously consistent, and ultimately devoid of liability, it is hardly noble, nor is it fair. Why can there be no compromise? Why can’t we have one no-questions-asked quarter of leave to tend to an ill loved one with the option, if necessary, to re-apply for leave on a quarterly basis? Be it your child, your mother, or the cousin who is like a brother to you, be it an illness of 10 weeks or 30 weeks, life happens. We are not only students but we are adult human beings and we need and deserve no less than the freedom to handle it without having the University burden us in the manner in which my husband and I, who have consistently maintained the highest standards of the University, have recently been burdened. On the contrary, we should be able to depend on the University of Chicago’s utmost support in such times of need.
That devastating phone call that comes in the middle of night when you’re half a world away is the nightmare scenario that came true for me on 31 January. It was no one’s fault, I did not ask for it, and believe me, we would much rather be in Jordan working on those dissertations right now. To say that it has been a hard time for us would be an understatement. We wish we hadn’t needed a Leave of Absence, but we did. And it wasn’t there for us. We wish we hadn’t needed help from our University, but we did. And it wasn’t there for us, either, until desperate persistence and a stroke of great fortune put us in contact with a few people who really took time to understand the problem and help us as best they could.
I implore you to revisit this policy. I beg you to change this policy. Someday this will happen to another student, and shame on the University of Chicago if it puts someone else through this.
Thank you for your time,
Elena Dodge Corbett, NELC
How it has come to this:
by Elena Corbett
This is my seventh year as a Ph.D. student in the NELC department where I am a Modern History concentrator. I began in Islamic Archaeology in 1998, obtained my M.A. in 2000, switched my concentration, completed my four years of coursework in Winter 2003 and took my comps in March of that year. From June 2003-June 2004 I was in Egypt on a Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) Fellowship. I returned for Summer Session 2004 to teach in the Summer Arabic Program and the Graham School. In September 2004 I left to begin my dissertation research in Jordan.
In December 2002, after nearly two years of cohabitating to join our meager financial forces, my husband and I were married. He is in his sixth year as a Ph.D. student in the NELC department where he is a concentrator in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology. Prior to that, he completed degrees in Anthropology and NELC as a U of C undergraduate. We have both been ABD for a year.
As a 21 year-old senior at Bucknell University graduating with honors and accolades I could never have imagined the financial strain I would find myself in now. I was just ecstatic and honored to get into a program like Chicago’s NELC, which was my first choice, and ultimately the only program of the seven to which I had applied that accepted me (being that it’s the only program to which I had applied that accepts students it won’t fund). Everyone had told me that grad school ultimately should and would pay for itself. I didn’t think any differently; my father had done it at Syracuse and had emerged unscathed. Likewise he had sent many of his advisees to competitive graduate programs all over the world and none seemed to be suffering. The same could be said of friends I had who had taken similar paths. So when I received my acceptance letter from the U of C, regretting that there was no funding to give me either tuition or stipend but suggesting that hard work would earn them for me eventually, I decided to go for it, and took out all the loans I could to get me through the first year and give me a cushion for the next. When I arrived in NELC and saw that some students had so much funding while others had so little or, like me, none, I brushed it off by telling myself that, despite my undergraduate successes and previous experience in my chosen field, somehow my peers must be more special than I am. It only made me more determined to succeed. After what may have been the most miserable, labor-intensive, loneliest year of my life, I had accumulated an excellent G.P.A., but received only tuition and no stipend while others who had done no better than I were at least given a token from the department’s pockets. Some of us among the unlucky justified this by saying, “Well, so-and-so works hard. He/she deserves it.” I said, “Well, so do we.” This was the first straw.
My second year at the U of C is another tale unto itself; in summary it led me to switch my concentration after already obtaining my M.A. The downside was that I would now have to do the better part of four years’ work in the two years of potential funding I had left. The upside was that my studies finally made me happy. I also had my soul mate and finally managed to get some funding in the form of a Title VI FLAS Fellowship because I was studying Arabic. My husband was not so fortunate. He had also by now accumulated two years’ worth of loans to fund his graduate education. And despite his B.A. from NELC and his continued, more-than-adequate scholastic performance, he was shut out of funding yet again. Yes, the department cut him checks to send him on their digs or on travel related to digs, but aside from tuition, he never got anything to help get him through the academic year. That year the two of us lived on my $11,000 stipend and his work study. The following year we lived on my $14,000 stipend and his work study. While my fellowship covered some of my fees, we paid U of C health insurance fees for two people. With one person’s stipend and a few thousand dollars in lousy work study money, we paid university fees for two people. We also ate, maintained ourselves, paid rent, and paid the low insurance rates promised by the Gecko on a 17 year-old hand-me-down car.
At this point I must explain that once NELC students finish scholastic residence (generally after 3.5--4 years), except for a few who are accepted with major university grants, there is no more funding. More appropriately, there is no more potential for funding. This is compounded by a dearth of (low-paying, without-benefits) teaching opportunities that are open to all students. Likewise, once I had completed scholastic residence, I was no longer eligible for FLAS funding. It must also be explained that there is a high price to be paid for love and marriage; the University does not take into consideration that students are married to each other or involved in domestic partnerships. This becomes especially detrimental in light of a funding structure where insurance and fees are not covered by the University and only one or neither partner may have a stipend. The University has no provision for a reduction in one partner’s program, university or health insurance fees.
Taking my CASA Fellowship to Egypt and leaving my husband behind in Chicago to face all the necessary fees without funding was not an option, so, as he had to be in the region to work on his dissertation anyway, we both went. We bought STA Travel Insurance because there was no way we could afford U of C insurance. At any rate, U of C insurance, from the perspective of students living abroad, only comes in handy if you are so badly hurt you need evacuation or if your mortal remains require repatriation. Medical care in the places we go is quite adequate and cheap enough to pay for out-of-pocket. My stipend in Cairo was equivalent to 290 USD per month. While we were doing a world better than most of Egypt’s 74 million inhabitants, inflation there is rampant and we still had to struggle and come up with all kinds of strategies to maintain ourselves. Most of my fellow CASA students, on the other hand, were ecstatic to be living in a manner beyond which they are used to at their home institutions. Why? Most of them are in graduate programs at our peer institutions and other institutions we consider “beneath” us. Let me give you a few examples of what I learned about graduate programs in these other universities: grad students at several of these institutions can take their year-long FLAS’s abroad and can combine them with other substantial grants; FLAS covers insurance fees at most of these institutions; out of all the students I met from these institutions, my husband and I were the only ones who had ever had to pay program, university, or health insurance fees, especially when abroad; many of these institutions have very powerful grad student unions; all grad students at these institutions are required to teach; every student who enters a program like History at NYU is guaranteed the same basic level of funding as his or her peers, including fees, health insurance, and an adequate stipend; and funding packages at most of these places are good for five years. I could go on.
With nearly nothing left in our bank account and no paycheck to look forward to until at least late July, we returned to Chicago at the beginning of June to teach in the Summer Session. My resentment only grew. What little faith I had left that academia would at least manage to keep some distance from the corporate model of administration was dashed when I saw how much my students were paying, what kind of services they were getting in return, how little I was getting paid relative to what I was doing and what they were paying, and even worse, the crap which my supervisors didn’t get paid enough to take. Really, it’s mind-boggling that the University manages to run at all and hasn’t completely alienated those highly competent, dedicated souls who keep us all afloat. That’s another story.
Despite the fact that we desperately miss our friends and the faculty and administrators we’ve grown close to over the years, my husband and I were so happy to leave Chicago again. You can only pay $10 out of the $290 you’re making every month so many times to have a transcript mailed from Admin to Wieboldt to apply for the money you so desperately need to make it through next year, only to be told that there were too many qualified applicants so you’re only getting a fraction of what you’d asked for. You can only be told to “not expect any money from the University” and to “use what’s leftover from your Fulbright” to pay your additional research expenses without screaming and shaking someone and trying to make them understand that you plan to use “what’s leftover from your Fulbright” to pay off what amounts to a fraction of the truly astonishing debt that you and your spouse have accumulated simply because of your U of C graduate education. You can only be made to feel ungrateful for your pro forma status and the Division’s “generosity” in picking up the tab so many times without wondering aloud, when you and your spouse write the $193 check each quarter for his pro forma fees, “What the hell are we paying $200 for when we’re not even there???” You can only take so many hits before you have nothing left to say or remember or expect except for the worst.
Now, despite the Fulbright, despite the fact that we’re only a couple years away from defending, we often lay awake at night, wondering if we’re actually going to finish our degrees. You see, my husband will have used up all of his pro forma at the end of the academic year. When my Fulbright ends, so does my pro forma. Then the $193 per quarter becomes something like $700 per quarter per person plus Student Activities Fees for two people, Student Clinic Fees for two people, and U of C insurance fees for two people (at current rates, a couple in our situation would have to pay more than 9.5 thousand dollars per year out of pocket just in fees to the University; by comparison, most TA positions, if one can obtain them, pay $1500 before taxes). As long as we are abroad, we can maintain the comprehensive travel medical insurance we have thanks to the memberships in Triple A that my parents got for us. Unlike the U of C’s plan, our plan is affordable, student-oriented, and we as a couple can hold one policy, the spouse costing about half of the policy-holder. When we are done overseas, we can no longer hold this plan. As long as we are registered U of C students, we are required to be insured. There is no way of guaranteeing that we will be able to obtain fellowships to support ourselves to the completion of our degrees. “What is leftover from the Fulbright” will only take us so far in this situation, and then there’s the unimaginable amount of educational debt we have incurred and the impact this is already having on our credit. We’re working on these dissertations as fast as we can, but despairingly we’ve recently come to the realization that it is more than likely that one of us, if not both, will have to quit and move on with life. Just which one of us will go first is still mostly undecided. While we’ve somehow managed to just make ends meet to this point, too many things have to happen in exactly the right way over the next couple of years to keep us from irretrievably sinking under our financial burden. In light of our debt, the sick nature of the academic job market and the tenure system, and the things we want out of our lives together, we simply can’t trust in the alignment of the stars.
We concede that yes, we should have been smarter, probably should have gotten out sooner. But we like what we do, we get a kick out of teaching, and we naively continued to think that despite everything, things would work themselves out. And we know that had we not been at U of C, we wouldn’t have met each other, wouldn’t know what we know, wouldn’t have lived overseas, wouldn’t have the friends we have, or have had the honor of knowing some of the professors we know. At the same time, we cynically wonder if, when one or both of us has to give up, anyone but these people will care. Will it weigh in the slightest on the consciences of our department or the University that two students who did all that was demanded of them and more got so close to finishing only to miss making ends meet? And will anyone be motivated to fix the situation so it doesn’t happen to someone else?
I am a grad student who has been living overseas for the past five years while working on my dissertation, in a country where health care is much cheaper than in the US, living with my husband, who is an MD here.
My medical expenses therefore are next to nothing. When my husband can't treat me, he sends me to the top specialists in the country, if not the entire continent, and their fees are never more than $20 for an office visit, and this includes follow-up visits as well. I've had two minor operations that cost less than $100 each, including the doctor's fee, the anesthesiologist, and private hospital stay. I think the absolute most expensive drug I may have ever had to purchase was something like 10 dollars, most are less than 2 dollars.
Nonetheless, I have been forced to spend $1500 a year for U of C insurance, or insurance that provides "equivalent" coverage. The U of C plan or an equivalent plan is not going to provide me with regular coverage so far from home, only emergency, and since the deductible is so high and out of proportion with my medical costs here, I have never even submitted a claim form to be reimbursed, and paid all my expenses out of my pocket.
Now, some of the five years I have had scholarships from the university itself or outside organizations that paid the fees, and I have had a job to cover the expense other years, but it still means that $7500 of money has been spent that was simply wasted.
I believe the university has no right requiring its students who are living in other countries to carry US insurance. I can imagine how hard this is on students from poor countries who return home while working on their dissertations and are working at local salaries to support themselves. I have complained about this before but the policy still exists.
This policy is so unjust and unreasonable that for this reason I have already decided that once I have graduated, I will never donate a single cent to the university. And I urge my fellow students to do the same, if we are asked to waste our money now, then we shouldn't support the university in the future.
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Hi! I've been abroad all year but have been following your activities with great interest and recently joined your mailing list. As if the cost of insurance and quality of medical care and customer service isn't already bad enough, I'm married
to someone in my own department (which funds almost no one, including the two of us!) and we are faced with having to pay full price for the both of us. And if that weren't bad enough, we have to travel abroad to a lot to do our research, and
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the university offers us no reasonable insurance option on that account. Nevermind that the plan makes it impossible, unless you're a millionaire, to get the prescription drugs you need before you go
(purchasing them abroad isn't always an option, depending on where you're travelling). Anyway, I just wanted to give you an idea of our particular circumstances as you attend the Town Hall meetings. I'd be there alongside you if I could. And I do hope you'll be active during the summer...my husband and I will be in Chicago and would love to help out in any way we
can. Thanks for all your hard work, and good luck!
I have always chosen the comprehensive level of insurance in order to assure
that should an unexpected medical emergency arise, I would have enough funds to cover the cost.
Please excuse the personal level of this disclosure, but I think it necessary to
share because the costs of health care are so exhorbitant at the University of
Chicago.
I had a routine follow-up to an irregular pap smear. The cost of a visit to a
gynecologist for a coloscopy was $2,500. My spouse also had to have a chest
x-ray within the same month. Including the deductible, I was left with almost
700 in bills for very rudimentary procedures (10 min. each). As a writing
intern, I make $1,900 per quarter. $700 constitutes an enormous expense.
My lab work came back normal. I do not know what I would do if I ever broke a
leg or had a medical condition that required more intensive care. I find this
disheartening because the reason why we are required to carry insurance is to
make sure that we will not have to disrupt our studies because of medical
expenses. I can foresee circumstances in which that might be the case even
though I have the highest level of insurance.
The University must recognize this as a problem. Students with limited funding
work many hours for low wages. It is unfair when a large percentage of those
wages are returned to the hospital for care. The wages the university pays are
not adequate to pay for expenses incurred for more serious medical conditions
even when you consider the maximum annual out-of-pocket expense. We simply do not have the financial means to invest even $1,000 a year in medical care.
1. It's not included with our health care. You can sign up for it separately (for a fee).
2. Its availability is very poorly advertised - my first year here I didn't even
know about it. and last year I specifically asked about dental insurance and tried to sign up for it. I found it very difficult - you had to send away for forms to fill out, and then no one could tell you which dentists nearby wouldaccept DMO insurance, or were accepting patients. This year they seemed to have remedied that - you can do everything online - but the availability of the insurance is still poorly advertised.
3. The insurance itself is TERRIBLE. I had to have a root canal (because I haven't had dental insurance for the last two years) and the insurance covers approximately 30% of the $1800 cost. Meaning I have to spend almost a month's pay to get a root canal.
When I got my offer from the U of C (now almost 2 years ago) I was also offered a comparable funding package from UMich. I remember looking over the letters and realizing that the Michigan package included healthcare for four years, even those years in which I was not required to work as a GSI. When I came to Chicago as a prospective student I met with a number of members of the faculty. I told them all that my offer from Michigan included healthcare, and that this effectively tacked a thousand or so dollars on to the stipend they were offering me. A member of the faculty looked me in the eye and told me not to take that into account. Another person here, I can't remember if it was an administrator or a faculty member, acted surprised, as if they could not believe that Michigan includes health care in their offers.
Well, I came to Chicago, and I love the city and my department, but I wish I had known that that decision would cost me more money each year. Every prospective student should be told to compare their offers carfully, to multiply the annual stipend by the number of years covered, multiply the cost of insurance by the same number, and the TACK ON A COUPLE THOUSAND OR SO for the amount it's bound to increase (or the expenses they'll be left with after
more cuts) and subtract the insurance from the stipend. Look every prospective in the face and tell them that their stipend will be reduced by several hundered a year as the university forces us to pay extrordinary prices for lousy healthcare.
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Last year I had to get an EKG, and the insurance company denied me coverage by claiming that my murmur was a "pre-existing condition." It was not,and I told them so, but they basically called me a liar and refused to pay. When I finally convinced them that I was telling the truth, they then came back with an offer to cover thirty percent of the bill, which I protested, so they upped it to fifty percent. It wasn't until five months of letters and phone calls later that I finally got them to pay the eighty percent for which I am supposed to be covered.
This summer I sent in a claim on a referral that I had paid for out of pocket, and they sent me back a check that was ninety dollars short of the amount that the insurance company itself admitted I was owed. I have been in person to speak to the Chickering representative about this matter several times, but I have not heard back on it. Meanwhile, they have been sitting on another claim for reimbursement for over a month. They owe me about $400 right now. With a yearly income of $15,000 (minus 10% for health insurance!) that's not an insignificant sum. It makes me very angry that I spend 10% of my income on insurance that doesn't have the most comprehensive coverage in the first place, and then have to fight tooth and nail to get the money to which I am entitled. I don't recall having so much trouble with other insurance plans to which I have subscribed.
On the topic of less-than-comprehensive coverage: the health plan has no coverage for dental or optometry visits--I need new glasses, but have to wait until next quarter's stipend check. And the mental health coverage is very limited. There is a life-time limit of seventy visits. I have a history of serious depression, and for me that is only two years of visits. What will I do next year?
So, while I pay ten percent of my income on health insurance, two of the four services I most commonly need (optometry and dental) are not covered at all, one of them (mental health) is crappily covered and the fourth (yearly exams) I pay for anyway through my student health fee. Furthermore, in the cases when I _do_ qualify for coverage through my health insurance, I have to struggle to gear reimbursed. What am I paying for again?
I suggest that either: the university insurance cover dental, optometry and mental health, or that they reduce our charges in health insurance. I know that this may be expensive, but it is pretty ridiculous that I spend 10% of my income on health insurance and still have to shell out for most of the cost of my health care, barring any major accident.
My final point is perhaps just jealousy, but it also makes me angry that physical science students and students with outside sources of funding (the latter in general having significantly larger stipends than internal funding provides) have their insurance covered by theuniversity and internally funded students in other divisions don't. Someone with an NSF making twenty-some thousand dollars a year gets free health insurance and those of us making twelve and fifteen thousand don't? Give me a break!
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I grew up in Canada, and so I grew up taking access for healthcare & health information for granted. It was basic to our quality of life, and not a "benefit" or a "luxury" or a "fellowship award." I think that the fact that I am very healthy owes everything to the free & easy access to healthcare I enjoyed in Canada. When I moved to the States, it was a shock to realize that good health and medical care is a privilege, for the privileged. But I was willing to pay an annual one-time fee to buy the access that I enjoyed as a human & civil right in Canada. Imagine, then, my surprise to find that I pay close to $2000/a for top-of-the-line "comprehensive" UofC health insurance and yet I still never visit a doctor without being charged between $50 and $100!!
How does this happen? For the uninitiated: there is a co-pay, then there is a deductible, there is usually some prescription, and then anything listed as preventive visit is not covered. By the time all these fees are paid, it is for me inevitably a new year and the cycle of deductible etc. begins again. I have yet to have a single consultation for which I don't pay at least $50.
So, I am in perfect health, because I have been in the habit of seeing my doctor regularly, before any conditions develop. (A habit which, studies show, reduces the chance of serious illness which in turn reduces long-term healthcare costs ...) But, with the UofC health insurance, I more and more cannot afford the check-ups and short visits for small ailments -- colds, flus, a skin rash, food poisoning (all autumn quarter 2003). I think twice now before I visit a doctor. And I have stopped seeing a dentist and an eye doctor, because my extra funds are already being paid to cover what an expensive UofC health insurance plan doesn't cover.
I know that this new behaviour, thanks to SASI, isn't healthy, and I worry about my health *more* now, because I put off medical consultations for fear of cost.
Once upon a time, access to medical knowledge and care was one of my basic civil rights and I grew up healthy. Today, sometimes all I can afford is the medical superstitions and gossip available on the internet, at the vitamin store or from friends, and I know this way of living poses real risks to my health. This way of living is a direct result of the combination of up-front and hidden high costs of health insurance through UofC
health insurance.
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In addition to the $60 fee for Assist America services, which I only discovered by calling to confirm with them that I was in fact covered, Chickering does not pay for many standard vaccines and medications for overseas travel. I recently was told that, in order to get a prescription filled for a standard course of preventative anti-malaria medication, I would have to pay $300.00 out of pocket since preventative anti-malarials are not covered. In the next breath, the pharmacist told me that the oral typhoid vaccine - available by prescription and necessary for travel/residency in many parts of the world - was also not covered by insurance, and I needed to pay the out-of-pocket cost for that. Had I needed other vaccinations such as yellow fever or a booster shot I would have been responsible for those costs, as well, to say nothing of any tests (TB, blood tests, parasite cultures, etc) that I may require when I return from overseas research.
It seems that Chickering finds it cheaper to deny coverage for basic preventative care, which leads many students to take risks (i.e. not taking anti-malaria medication) that we otherwise wouldn't if the medications were covered. In addition, because of the buried 100 mile/90 day provision in the "travel insurance" we are provided, many students may not even realize that their insurance has lapsed until they get sick and need emergency care, and are then stuck with
the entire bill and no recourse to appeal it and no means of paying for the care they received.
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If a student wants expatriate coverage or any of the travel insurance provisions supposedly provided in the insurance plan by assist america, you need to pay an EXTRA fee of $60 if you will be more than 100 miles away for more than 90
consecutive days, or your coverage will lapse until you return to your
billing area and then leave again
I know $60 might seem like small potatoes, but between that, the vaccine costs, the
prescription costs, and everything else it adds up to an awful lot out
of pocket if you do overseas research, which a good portion of U of C grad students do at some point in time.
My husband is an artist (thus self-employed) and diabetic (insulin dependent, which requires many prescriptions a month). The only way for him to have insurance coverage is to be a dependent on my insurance. Dependent coverage is twice the cost of student coverage ($888/quarter for 3 quarters), and it is only possible to get the Basic plan, which covers very little, especially for prescriptions and tests, which are essential for diabetics. It would probably be cheaper to not have the insurance and pay for everything out of pocket, but we keep the insurance for the little it covers and in the event of an emergency. We
often have to pay for insurance/medical expenses out of savings.
In my first year of grad school (2002-2003), I faced a potentially quite serious condition. Proper medical diagnosis of the situation ultimately required me to
undergo two "high-cost procedures," in the language of the university's then-current student insurance plan: an endoscopy and two MRIs. Because of the seriousness of the condition, I opted to undergo these procedures even though I knew they would likely go well above the costs. I was, in fact, stunned that my financial liability was no more than about $1100 when all was said and done.Granted, the "high-cost procedure cap" was removed after just one year in place. However, the fact that the university was willing to put it in place signifies that it has not historically taken students' health to be an overriding consideration in choosing insurance plans. This offends me and it requires change.
This is from the story below. Just the last paragraph but I find it to be the kernel, the catch 22, the Achilles heel of completing a degree at the U of C as a social science and humanities student.
The high cost of health coverage at this University is preventing the full development of scholars, and the ability of students like me to give adequate attention to our work. We are stuck on a treadmill of just trying to presere our status as students under the current system.Posted by sos at 12:46 PM
ACCESS TO UNIVERSITY RESOURCES REGULARLY BLOCKED BY RESTRICTIONS DUE TO INABILITY TO PAY HIGH INSURANCE PREMIUMS
For the last few years, I have had a regular routine. Although daily during the academic year I provide a service as a Preceptor to undergraduate students in my department, and I'm expected to continue as needed over the summer without compensation, I usually can't access resources like NSIT and the libraries because I'm on restriction. I simply can't pay the extraordinary fees for health and hospitalization coverage for my family and me. The majority of my income through the year as a Preceptor goes to covering health care and student services fees, and I am unable to get a better paying job because I need the tuition waiver that accompanies the appointment.
It is like being tied to a company store, but because I can never pay the fees to the last minute, I work under restrictions that don't allow me access to the goods. Besides health care, it seems that what I get out of it is the privilige of not having the possibility of completing my degree completely eliminated. The care system is also a bureaucratic maze-- on several occassions I've been repeatedly
ignored while trying to get information by phone or email from the campus liason, only to find them out of the office on multiple visits.
The high cost of health coverage at this University is preventing the full development of scholars, and the ability of students like me to give adequate attention to our work. We are stuck on a treadmill of just trying to presere our status as students under the current system.