Graduate Student Senate discussed a new plan on Tuesday for health care and an extension for a different grading option.
This health care plan would not raise the amount students would have to pay from last year. The Student Health Insurance Policy Advisory Committee will be pushing United Health Care to make the coverage better.
GSS signed a three year contract with United Health Care, making next year the last year that graduate student health care will be through United Health Care, Kaelyn Ferris, GSS president, said.
United Health Care typically sends their policy in mid-January for the next year. Usually they have a few months to collect the claims data to determine what their policy will be for the next year, Ferris said.
“There’s also one thing that I think we need to work on as a university really badly which is educating students, specifically graduate students, on how to navigate health insurance,” Ferris said. “What is it? Why do we need it? What is a deductible? What is a copay?
Ohio University could help graduate students understand why health insurance is so important before they need to determine what plans they will be purchasing. This is also a new concept that some students, especially international students, have not heard of, Ferris said.
Within the past two years there has been double digit premium increases within the same contract. Some members of GSS were concerned that while this 0% increase was a move in the right direction this contract is not a great win, Brett Fredericksen, commissioner of Academic Life: Research, said.
“I refuse to believe that this is a dichotomy of ‘sign this 0% increase or risk an increase later on,’” Fredericksen said. “I’ve seen plans from other universities that have multi tier policies … and increased and level subsidies at a university to partition out some of these costs as well.”
Courtney Silver-Peavey, member of the Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee, will be pushing OU to pay more in subsidies to help graduate students not have to pay outrageous amounts. The committee will be focused on getting a better offer from United Health Care and more funding from OU for their healthcare.
The extension for a grade option would be an addition to the same grade option that was offered last semester. Last semester there was an option for students, both undergraduate and graduate students, to choose pass/fail for different classes that were not core classes or exempt from this option. This grading option would be carried over for this semester, Ferris said.
This extension would allow students to choose this option for an extended period of time instead of the time that was originally given by OU. While many graduate classes would not be included in the list of classes that could use this grading option, many of the members were in favor because it could not hurt GSS. It would help those who need it during these strange times, Fredricksen said.
