Health insurance bill moves toward vote
07 02 08 - 11:28
Kevin Robillard
Issue date: 2/7/08 Section: News
University Senate legislation requiring students to prove they have health insurance or buy into a university plan may be headed to the senate floor for approval after more than a year of debate on the issue, senate officials say.
The Student Affairs Committee's health insurance proposal, which resembles policies adopted by several other universities, would offer aid to students from low-income families to help cover the cost of insurance.
The committee has yet to vote on the proposal, but both Roberto Munster, the chair of the Student Affairs Committee, and Senate Chair William Montgomery seemed cautiously optimistic that the plan will pass the full senate.
A vote could come as early as Feb. 11 to send the bill to the Senate Executive Committee, which could then approve the measure for a full senate vote.
At a forum held yesterday to gather feedback about the plan, Montgomery continued to push for the measure.
"I don't want to see anyone who is denied an education because of an illness that happened to them," Montgomery said, "I'm prejudiced on this."
Although neither Montgomery nor Munster would predict the plan's fate, both said they were unaware of any strong opposition to it.
But Montgomery remained cautious: "You just never know."
After moving slowly to develop a plan to cover uninsured students - University Health Center Director Sacared Bodison asked the senate to consider the issue more than a year ago - the process seemed to speed up in just the past few weeks.
Montgomery made an emotional appeal toward the close of last semester to speed up the process, saying he hoped a proposal would be ready by March.
Munster attributed the quicker pace to the committee's desire to get the plan in place for the fall 2009 semester. He also said the committee wanted to finish the proposal before the end of the year because most of its members are students whose terms will be up.
Insuring all uninsured students carries a price tag of $1.5 million a year, the committee estimates .
It will be up to university President Dan Mote, who has expressed support for the plan, to allocate money, but Munster said he doesn't imagine tuition would be affected.
Most students won't be affected by the plan. A university Health Center survey found that only 6.7 percent of students are uninsured and of those, 60 percent are students receiving financial aid.
Under the proposal, the university would pay for health insurance for some students who qualify for the Maryland Pathways Work Grant program or for federal Pell Grants. This means that some students would likely be forced to buy health insurance.
"I don't think we'll have many cases" of students who don't want to buying it, Munster said.
However, Munster said he would bring up the possibility of the university providing aid to students who don't qualify for Pell Grants or Maryland Pathways.
The health care issue on the campus and its proposed solution mirror the national debate over the uninsured.
Health care costs at the university and nationally are driven up by "adverse selection." Essentially, people who think they are likely to get sick are more likely to purchase health insurance than those who are typically healthy.
What the university's plan hopes to do is similar to what most universal health care plans proposed at the national or state level aim for - to force the healthy to buy in and spread costs more evenly.
The university's current health insurance plan costs about $1,300 per student, Bodison said, while other universities with mandatory health insurance have plans that cost about $800 per student.
To opt out of purchasing the university insurance, students would have to pass a "hard waiver" proving they have insurance rather than simply saying they do. Bodison said this was because a Cornell University study had shown a significant number of students would lie about having insurance.
Yesterday's forum was sparsely attended, but one snag brought up was the issue of covering part-time students. Montgomery worried that students would enroll in a single course just to get health insurance.
Munster said the issue with part-time students would be the primary consideration the Student Affairs Committee have to make before voting on whether to send the proposal to the Senate Executive Committee.
The proposal would grandfather in current students and does not cover graduate students, many of whom objected to being included because their financial situations are more complicated than those of most undergraduates.
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