As of now, I promise my readership (all seven of you) that I will avoid complaining about things that I probably cannot change. However, in this case, I just want to get something off my chest.
Like lots of students out there, my eyes used to swiftly glaze over whenever I saw politicians talk about health insurance. This was especially true during the 2004 elections.
It's not that I didn't care about an issue that was supposedly a crushing financial burden on many American families.
Rather, health insurance just seemed too arcane, technical and distant to really get my political juices flowing. After all, during the 2004 election we had matters that were apparently more important, such as war, Bush's wood company and Kerry's Botox.
Then again, all politics is personal.
During the elections last year, my mother was employed at a hospital. A healthy insurance plan was nicely printed on a small card in my wallet. I rarely ever needed it, but at least it was there.
The only time I've needed health insurance while at college was during finals week of my freshman year, when I pushed a broken fire-rescue truck through the snow in upstate New York after already having been sick for a week. It's a long story, but I basically ended up with a fever of 102. I was able to easily check myself into the hospital, get called an idiot by three separate doctors, receive fluids and leave after a few hours with only a $35 copayment.
Fast-forward to 2005. My current situation is different. My mother is no longer employed, making my beautiful old insurance card even less useful than a fake New Jersey license at New Deck.
To save money, I would have been willing to skip insurance for a while, at least until my mom found a new job or an affordable health-care provider. Besides, most of the medical care I need would be covered by the beefy clinical fee that we all pay.
Unfortunately for my wallet, Penn believes that it should save me from myself. All students are required to either demonstrate "adequate" health insurance or enroll in Penn's $2,202 health-insurance program by Friday.
Penn's insistence on insurance is in accordance with its membership in the American College Health Association, which believes that college health insurance should be mandatory.
An administrator of Penn's insurance program explained that the policy exists because of previous instances in which some students were unable to pay sudden health costs and were forced to drop out of college.
The ACHA itself maintains that it is concerned about large percentages of students choosing not to carry or being unable to afford insurance. However, some cynics believe that universities with hospitals are simply trying to reduce the financial burden of student emergency-room visits. Apparently, there is a hidden cost to Spring Fling.
Whether through some perverse sense of irony or sheer stupidity, the ACHA solution to students who are unable or unwilling to purchase insurance is to force them to pay for it anyway.
Aside from the fact that forcing students to buy unwanted or unaffordable health insurance is a ridiculous idea, the Penn insurance plan is particularly expensive. Those of us whose parents don't have employers (or cash) to pay for private insurance are stuck with the enormous and inflexible $2,202 Aetna health plan offered by Penn. While the plan is very comprehensive and well-managed, it can't be customized in any way to be cheaper.
By comparison, Columbia offers two types of plans for students that are as much as $900 cheaper. Princeton -- whose insurance is managed by the Chickering Group, which also administers Penn's insurance --charges $840 per year, which is a whopping $1,500 less than Penn's required plan.
If Penn is going to treat students like babies and force us to buy health insurance, they should at least make it affordable and offer several insurance options.
As for all of you who have been forced to buy Penn's insurance, I suggest that we meet at the field next to Hamilton during the first snowstorm of the year and play four hours of tackle football. The first dozen people that actually use their deluxe Penn/Aetna insurance card at the emergency room win cookies on me.
Eric Obenzinger is a junior history major from New York. Quaker Shaker appears on Wednesdays.
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