Viruses and emergency surgeries can spring out of nowhere, surprising even the most prepared individual.

Yet, for a small portion of MSU students – about 10 percent of undergraduate and 20 percent of graduate students – the fear of becoming ill is a harsh reality they face.

The Student Health Subsidy Program, which offered free health care to MSU students who qualified, was dissolved earlier this year.

The program was originally created to ease the number of MSU students using the local Ingham County program.

Now that the SHSP has run out of funding, students are being sent back to Ingham clinics.

The program ran out of state funding that was never promised, and university officials said they were made fully aware that this would happen.

The Ingham Health Plan, which is again seeing a student influx, isn’t tailored to students the same way.

It doesn’t possess the wide variety of prescription drugs, physical therapy, dental care or mental therapy that MSU’s program offered.

And it doesn’t help those students who commute to MSU or live out of state.

To be eligible for the Ingham plan, students must be residents of the county, which leaves some commuter and most out-of-state students out of luck. But they can find similar programs in their own counties.

Before the SHSP was instituted in 2001, Olin offered unlimited free visits to full-time MSU students.

Since then, the clinic lowered the number of visits to three per year for all full- and part-time students.

Now that the plan is gone, Olin should increase the number of visits per student.

Perhaps asking for an unlimited number of visits again would be unreasonable considering the economy has drastically changed since then.

Maybe three visits allotted to uninsured students per semester could be instituted.

University officials would need to ensure that the program would not be abused and that every student, regardless of insurance, is treated fairly.

The university also offers a one-year insurance plan that students can purchase for $1,393.

While it’s wonderful MSU is providing another resource for students, not everyone can afford to drop that much money when they’re looking for additional funding in the first place.

Though the plan can be covered by student loans, that puts students further in debt.

And for students paying tuition, the university needs to help students cut costs whenever it can.

The university needs to find a better way to accommodate this minority in the MSU community.