“I could live with it, I had to,” he said. “I didn’t have the money to have it looked at.”

As it would turn out, Greenway had broken his wrist. Because he couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit or a cast, he said his wrist healed in an awkward way. For the most part, Greenway says his wrist is OK, but it still hurts him to bend it a certain way.

He found this out when he re-enrolled at MSU and was granted coverage by the university’s free health plan which offered basic services for students who couldn’t afford health insurance.

Now, MSU’s program has ended, leaving Greenway and many of the other 639 students enrolled in the program looking for their next shot at health care.

Out of funds

Chris Hanna, MSU interim assistant vice president of human resources, said MSU’s free health care program, the Student Health Subsidy Program, or SHSP, was created in 2001 in order to provide relief for Ingham County health clinics, which many MSU students without insurance were visiting.

When the program was created, university officials estimated that about 18 percent of undergraduates and 26 percent of graduate students were eligible for the program.

MSU’s program received part of its funding through a partnership with Ingham County, as well as federal, state and local sources, Hanna said.

The funding provided to MSU’s free health program ran out earlier this year.

Hanna said the program was never promised additional funding and Ingham County notified MSU that none would be available.

Moving forward

MSU is pointing students who lost coverage under the SHSP to the Ingham Health Plan.

Like MSU’s plan, Ingham’s also is free. It lacks some of the services that MSU’s program provided, however – a wide variety of prescription drugs, physical therapy, dental care, travel shots and mental health care.

Despite the fact that MSU’s program was created in part to help offset the toll uninsured MSU students were taking on Ingham’s program, the Ingham Health Plan will be able to handle MSU students once again, said Robin Reynolds, director of Ingham Health Plan.

To qualify for Ingham’s plan, you must be a resident of Ingham County and have an annual income of no more than $25,525 for a single person, Reynolds said.

“We’re just starting to see an influx of MSU students,” she said. “I think the transition is working well.”

Since MSU’s program ended on Aug. 14, Reynolds said 14 people have signed up for the Ingham Health Plan. There’s no guarantee those are MSU students, she said.

Greenway says he plans to check if he qualifies for the Ingham Health Plan, but it’s a task he said he isn’t looking forward to. Since you only can sign up during normal business hours, he said he would have to miss school to travel to Lansing.

MSU’s plan was more convenient because he could register on campus, Greenway said.

Kathi Braunlich, spokeswoman for Olin Health Center, said before MSU’s program was created, Olin offered unlimited free visits to all full-time MSU students. When the program was launched, that number shrank to three visits per year for all full- and part-time students.

Now that the program has ended, the university has so far announced no plan to raise the number of visits back.

Creating a free health plan and reducing the number of yearly visits to three for all other students was a way to reduce costs and provide more thorough coverage to students who couldn’t afford health insurance, Braunlich said.

Braunlich acknowledged that MSU’s plan was more convenient for students than Ingham’s plan, partly because it provided more services.

“We wanted to have a program that was friendlier to a college student’s needs,” she said. “We wanted to make it as simple as possible for students.”

The out-of-towners

Requiring enrollees of the Ingham Health Plan to be a resident of Ingham County could be a problem for out-of-state students and students who commute to MSU from other areas of the state, like Megan Anderson.

Since Anderson lives in Wayne County and commutes to MSU, she doesn’t qualify for the Ingham County plan.

Anderson said she has yet to find a free program in Wayne and fears she may have to wait until she graduates and finds a job until she can afford health insurance.

“It’s not an option at this point and that’s something I’ve just kind of accepted,” the social relations and policy senior said.

Despite the fact that MSU’s program was basic – hospital services and emergency room visits weren’t covered – it was better than nothing, Anderson said.

“It was something I didn’t have to worry about,” she said. “If I got sick, I could go to the doctor, but that’s not an option now.”

Anderson said she’s starting to feel the backlash of not having any help with her medical bills. A recent trip to the doctor cost her $55 and the medication her doctor prescribed to her would have cost $200, a price she was unwilling to pay.

“I’m scared of getting sick,” she said. “It’s not right that there’s so many people in this life that live such extravagant lives, and there’s some people who die in the street because they can’t afford health insurance.”

A new path

About 10 percent of MSU undergraduates and 20 percent of graduate students don’t have insurance, Braunlich said.

Erin Hager is one of those students.

And while not having insurance bothers her, she’s more worried about people who have chronic illnesses and can’t afford care.

Those worries have turned into disgust, motivating her to attempt to start a group advocating for universal health care. So far, she has been gathering e-mail addresses of like-minded people so she can initiate group meetings.

“This is how the system is, and people don’t really think they can change it,” the social work senior said. “You’ve got to motivate people to change.”

Hager has had her encounters with the health care system.

This summer, she had to spend time in the hospital.

The average cost of a day in a Michigan hospital is between $1,000 and $2,000, Braunlich said.

“I’m looking at a lot of debt in the future,” Hager said. “Our health care system is so screwed up. If you don’t have money, you can’t get care. Most countries consider health care a basic right.”