They will be required to have health insurance starting in August. The university is paying half of the premium and the student pays the other half. The student can get a waiver if they already have health insurance, but the insurance being offered is probably better than the state employees plan.

It is the same plan that international students have been required to purchase for years. It is also the same plan that UM has adopted. Give Susan Siltanen credit for pushing this for several years.

http://www.usm.edu/internationaledu/ISSS%20PDFs/Insurance%20information%20sheet%204061.pdf

www.studentinsure.com/usm Trawick Insurance, underwritten by Aetna I think

Health insurance is available for anyone that wants to pay for it.  There's no conspiracy here - move along people.

Anonymous wrote:

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Health insurance is available for anyone that wants to pay for it. There's no conspiracy here - move along people.

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There may not be a conspiracy, but there are some questions that should be asked:

1. Why can't students receiving tuition waivers who aren't covered by another health insurance plan reject the coverage?  Why is it mandatory?? (yes, I know it probably has something to do with a minimum number of people needed before the policy would be written)

2.  While I appreciate that the university is "picking up half of the tab" for the students, where is the money coming from?  Is this why programs only got 90% of the previous year's allocation for assistantship budgets?  Why are work study slots being cut back? Why is the university "discussing" no longer providing 12 month-stipends to grad students on work study? Are these cuts going to a pool of money to pay for the university's part of the insurance plan?  I bet some students who won't get funded in the upcoming academic year would prefer no insurance (or purchase the previously available optional insurance plan) and receive a stipend instead. 

stinky cheese man wrote:

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HEST--i suggest you talk with your chair about assistantships and health insurance. i think the 90% figure on assistantship budgets was a while back and was changed within the last day or two.

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OK, while we were not aware of that news in my program yesterday, it may answer one question. . . what about Work Study positions then?  What's going on there?  Does it have any relationship to the student insurance or is just another potential set of cuts?

 

stinky cheese man wrote:

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as i understand it work study and insurance are unrelated issues. but again, talk with your chair.

-- Edited by stinky cheese man at 21:38, 2007-05-02

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I never would have thought of talking to my chair. . .Thanks for the suggestion.

In the mean time, it sounds as if you might have some information to which some of us might not be privvy.  Mind sharing what you know?

 

stinky cheese man wrote:

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chairs and deans know information that will answer your questions.  i know nothing more than they know.

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I have spoken to our (my and HEST's chair), and the final hit is not yet in (unless it occured this AM). What I do know is that our department's allocation for WS and GA has been hit for several years. Some of the changes that would be beneficial if our pool of cash was not decreased (increased stipends and insurance) may lead to some surprises for students-no stipends or tuition waivers for some this year. The suky part of all this is that the admin should have had its financial ducks in a row way before this with respect to graduate funding--it puts us in a position that is very awkward-and no program I know of in my discipline goes through this nonsense year to year. The real suky part of this is that we have accrediation coming up--and we will be in the thankless position of having to explain to APA why our relatively meager GA/WS budget is not only not being increased, but has been targeted over the years for redistribution to other programs (I still have a copy of the letter from Jay in my file explaining his intentions and plans in this area).

 

http://www.usm.edu/healthservice/services/insurance.html