Ensuring financial distress

THE EMPHATIC OBSERVER
By Rabia Newton

Some Portland State students were surprised to find their tuition bill a bit higher than usual this quarter. Well, actually, a lot higher than usual.

This sharp increase is mainly owing to the school’s new extensive student health insurance plan, which provides comprehensive coverage in place of the minimal benefits provided under the old policy.

Any student taking five or more credits is automatically enrolled in the program, but does have the choice of annually “opting out” if he or she is covered under a comparable plan.

I happen to be one of these lucky few and was able to waive the exorbitant insurance fee by filling out a relatively simple electronic form. Many others weren’t so fortunate.

Before the start of the term, nearly 6,100 students had already petitioned to opt out of PSU’s new student insurance, and more than 800 of them were denied. For the majority of our roughly 30,000 students, waiving the fee wasn’t even an option.

As someone who considers herself progressively liberal, I’m hesitant to criticize anything that smacks of health care reform. But, strictly in terms of numbers like these, our new plan is concerning to say the least.

The reworked health program will set PSU students back $560 dollars per term, which is an almost 400 percent increase from the old policy. Not to mention the cost for a year—$1,680—is only slightly less expensive than 12 credits of tuition—a full load for most of us. And for the ill-fated part-timers, the plan will nearly double their quarterly bill.

Are you angry yet? Because you probably should be.

As the largest public university in the state, PSU should be striving to make education more accessible, not less. And for some, this added cost is doing just that: creating a potentially insurmountable barrier to higher learning.

Demographic trends indicate that uninsured Americans are most likely to be both young and poor, a description many current and prospective PSU students would promptly claim as their own. (After all, PSU is a reasonably priced public institution, so it shouldn’t exactly come as a shock that we’re not all rolling in cash.)

And, sure enough, according to a 2010 survey conducted by the Oregon University System, 60 percent of PSU students don’t have health insurance from sources other than the university.

By drastically increasing the cost of tuition to cover these enhanced mandatory health insurance fees, PSU may be targeting its most economically vulnerable students. Keep in mind, too, that financial stress is one of the most oft-cited reasons for students leaving school.

Actually, in an unpleasantly ironic twist of fate, this new policy may wind up benefitting the most privileged sector of the student body—those of us with insurance from an outside provider.

Under the previous plan, we weren’t allowed to “opt out” of PSU’s mandatory coverage, meaning we often paid for benefits that never got used. All of us will save a pretty penny with the option to waive the reworked program.

But can I relish in these savings when some of my fellow students just lost a good portion of their rent money to this unforeseen policy change? Nope, not really.

According to PSU officials, an overhaul of the student health plan has been a long time coming. They cite a few driving forces behind the recent shift in coverage, concentrating on the relative lack of benefits guaranteed under the old plan and the potentially devastating academic consequences of a major illness or emergency.

Interestingly, the fact that our previous health insurance didn’t meet new federal guidelines for minimum benefits has been consistently downplayed by the administration.

Dana Tasson of PSU’s Center for Student Health and Counseling frames the issues as almost entirely student-centered: “We believe students need access to care and adequate insurance so they can maintain good health and stay in school. We don’t want them to have to make the choice between buying medication and buying a book. We also know that students are one accident away from having their entire college career derailed if they incur medical expenses.”

Tasson’s logic seems sound, but I have to wonder if collectively sticking students with this major additional financial burden is actually going to help relieve stress, especially for those who struggle every term to cover their baseline tuition costs.

I appreciate that PSU wants to take care of its students. But, in the end, the school cannot protect any one of us from suffering some kind of life-altering event—not just health-related—that could potentially derail our academic careers. As they say, life happens.

But, unfortunately, by fundamentally tethering higher education to comprehensive health care, PSU is ensuring that some students access neither. And that is a shame.