For Stephanie Onderchanin, the national health care debate isn’t just a distant war being waged in the studios of cable news networks, she quite literally will feel the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in her bones.
Last year, the biochemistry and molecular biology junior was diagnosed with polyarthralgia, a form of joint arthritis that requires two medications to treat. She also is receiving psychiatric treatment from Olin Health Center.
She said she likely will rely on her parents’ insurance — guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act until her 26th birthday — to pay for her medication.
“I’m not going to get a job with great benefits, so that’s very important to me,” Onderchanin said.
Two distinct ideological debates about health care and the role of government in everyday life are in full swing: one at MSU and one in Washington, D.C.
The past several weeks have been a test of MSU’s new health insurance policy, which requires all students to carry insurance. At the state Capitol, some lawmakers have attacked the change and argued the requirement adds an unnecessary cost barrier to college.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s sweeping and controversial health care overhaul.
The results of each conflict, however legally complicated on the surface, have potential to affect students’ wallets now and for years down the road.
Affordable Care Act
Perhaps the most direct effect for students in the Affordable Care Act is a provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health care until age 26. Many insurance providers previously would not let college graduates remain on a parent’s plan, and some still won’t allow it in all cases until 2014 when the act officially takes effect.
But some students still are leery of the plan’s funding, and whether it is a wise use of taxpayer money. Hospitality businesses senior Matthew Golling said the plan was rushed through too fast, without taking time to consider all the spending implications.
“The frightening thing is it was passed so quickly, we have a hard time catching up,” Golling said.
When philosophy professor Leonard Fleck was drafting then-President Bill Clinton’s unsuccessful health care plan in the early 1990s, he drew a conclusion: without throwing out America’s current system entirely, health care won’t ever get cheaper.
With so many different health care companies in privatized health care, not to mention different options within those companies, costs of administrative overhead are shoved onto consumers.
“You have these powerful institutional actors that will affect a certain degree of health care reform,” said Fleck, who advocates for unilateral government insurance that countries such as Canada have.
Health care costs for most Americans have steadily climbed in recent years. Standard family coverage increased 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Fleck said fast advances in medical technology continue to be a major factor for price increases as new, more expensive remedies become options.
At MSU
It started with a private meeting.
State Rep. Kevin Cotter, R-Mount Pleasant, met with Provost Kim Wilcox and other MSU administrators in January, hoping to reach an agreement on MSU’s health care mandate for undergraduate students, which was slated to go into effect the next day.
Wilcox agreed to extend the deadline, but stood firm behind the university’s reasoning that it protects students from expensive, out-of-pocket medical bills. Cotter didn’t budge either, calling the policy a costly barrier to education.
After a special hearing in February ended in disagreement, the committee passed a budget proposal that would force MSU to get rid of its health care policy or lose state funds.
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Since the deadline, about 600 newly admitted students have enrolled in the $1,505-per-year Aetna plan offered through MSU, although it is not clear how many are on the plan by choice or were automatically enrolled.
Many students have argued it is in the students’ best interest, even those without ailments.
“If I didn’t already have health insurance from my parents, … I probably wouldn’t have thought about why health insurance was important to me,” Student Health Advisory Council president Julie Nguyen said, defending the plan’s intent to legislators during February’s committee meeting. “Because I’ve never had any health issues before.”
But, while some students have come to the university’s side to defend the plan, others have said they’ve been harmed by kinks in the system.
Veterinary medicine student Nick Barbu said a kink in the system is forcing him to pay for coverage he won’t use.
Barbu, who is expecting to graduate next month, said he is being charged for about three months of coverage, even after he starts a job with health benefits.
Barbu said he has tried to get a partial refund, but was denied by university officials — a problem he’s afraid will spread to the undergraduate community as the plan is phased in.
“They make out with cash even though we don’t need it,” Barbu said. “It should be made crystal clear to people what they’re trying to do.”
University spokesman Jason Cody said any incorrect billing for students holding qualified insurance will be corrected by the university’s human resources department.
