Students who enrolled in classes this spring were met with a $1,076 price tag for health insurance — about a 14 percent increase from last semester.
When Fatma Jabbari left Tunisia to pursue her education in the United States, she said she did so out of ambition. A former Fulbright Scholar and current Arabic teaching assistant at Ohio University, the odds seemed stacked in her favor.
Now, in the process of completing her third master’s degree, Jabbari, a first-year graduate student studying African studies and political science, has run into an unforeseen roadblock: she, along with the more than 1,700 international students enrolled at OU as of Fall Semester 2015, does not have the option to choose her own health insurance plan.
Domestic and international continuing students at OU are required to pay a premium of $867 per semester. Those who enrolled in classes this spring, however, were met with a $1,076 price tag — about a 14 percent increase, according to Student Insurance Administrator Anna Casteel. That increase, Casteel said, is due to the number of large claims students made during the past policy year.
“The fee appears on their student account along with tuition, etc. They (international students) do not have the option to decline this coverage,” Krista McCallum Beatty, director of International Student and Faculty Services, said in an email.
The system Jabbari has encountered in America is unlike the situation back home in Tunisia, she said, where healthcare is free to the public.
“I know how crucial it is to have health insurance, both back home and here. So what we’re saying is not that we don’t want to pay for health insurance,” Jabbari said. “We might end up having the university health insurance, but we need to have the right to choose.”
Every student at Ohio University is required to have an active health insurance plan, which is run through UnitedHealthcare. International students holding F and J immigration statuses, given to non-immigrant students, are automatically registered for the university’s plan.
Domestic students are able to complete a waiver that allows them to choose their own health insurance, even if that means, for example, remaining on a parent's plan.
The ability to register for classes, however, is a necessity to international students — not just to continue their education, but to stay in the country. Failure to pay for the university health insurance plan hinders international students from registering for classes in the future, Beatty said.
“You cannot negotiate anything,” Jabbari said. “And if you don’t enroll for classes, that means you’ll be violating your visa status … you can either get deported, or you will have problems.”
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According to the university’s medical services policy, last approved in 2014, “eligible” international students can request a waiver after submitting proof of coverage that “meets or exceeds the university’s health insurance policy repatriation coverage and meets or exceeds the Affordable Care Act requirements for all other coverage.”
Now, with the increase in the plan’s cost, on top of paying rent and student fees, Jabbari is unsure of how she will make it through the year.
Jabbari recently voiced her concerns about international student health insurance at a Graduate Student Senate meeting March 21. At that meeting, former GSS president Eddie Smith and former vice president of finance Liudmila Pestun supported Jabbari’s concerns.
Jabbari said she has no plans to challenge the university’s policy directly, but hopes to raise awareness in the name of her fellow international students.
“I’m not here to challenge anything. I’m not challenging any authority,” Jabbari said. “I’m just here to claim my rights, and international students’ rights.”
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