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Graduate students seek better health care coverage

February 5, 2008

For Melissa Fore, the first step to better health care for graduate employees is to acknowledge the difference between graduate and undergraduate needs.

“A lot of times it feels like a student policy,” Fore said. “As graduate students, we have different concerns. We don’t go and ask mom and dad to foot our medical bills, but they still treat us like we’re students. We have different concerns.”

It is those concerns that the Graduate Employees Union, or GEU, hopes to address when it negotiates the health care portion of its new contract with the university. The union is looking to get coverage for vaccinations, affordable birth control and cheaper prescription co-pays.

According to the current contract, generic drug co-pays are $10 and brand-name co-pays are $20.

Fore, a teaching assistant in English 203, said the current health care plan was too restrictive, particularly when it came to birth control.

“Last time I had to investigate different birth control options, I had to fight tooth and nail to get birth control options covered,” she said.

Vaccinations also are a concern for TAs, said Sandra Schmidt, president of the GEU.

With the higher volume of study abroad programs being offered by the university and the likelihood that those programs will require TAs, change in the current agreement is vital, Schmidt said.

“Right now, the reason we’re looking at vaccinations is because they’re not covered at all,” she said.

This can cause a problem because vaccinations can be expensive for students, she said. If a student were to go to an area with malaria, a vaccination could cost about $65, according to the MSU Travel Clinic.

“Ideally, our first priority would be to have them covered as preventative,” Schmidt said. “But if that’s not going to happen, if they want to treat them as drugs, then we would like it to be a co-pay.”

Health care, however, is a complex issue and one that requires a great deal of consideration on behalf of the university, said Karen Klomparens, dean of the Graduate School.

“(Health care) is a national problem,” Klomparens said. “This is a microcosm of what happens nationally. We need a plan that serves the most needs of the most people (while considering) individuals who may have more problems. You have to maximize the amount of coverage while still covering the needs of individuals.”

For an institution such as MSU, a balance has to be considered, she said.

“There’s a whole bunch of things that get balanced when an institution or anyone chooses health care,” Klomparens said.

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