Commentary: Graduate and Professional Students Deserve Affordable and High-Quality Health Care
By Daniel Luu
Contributing Writer
On October 17th, University of California Student Association (UCSA), a coalition of student governments representing over 220,000 students at all of the UC campuses, met at UCSF for the monthly UCSA Board Meeting to organize the direction of their two campaigns this year, which revolve around rescuing Cal Grants from elimination for undergraduates and implementing a system-wide Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan (GSHIP).
You’re probably wondering, don’t we already have graduate health insurance? What’s wrong with it? The answer is the University of California has been working on improving the cost and quality of GSHIP for graduate students across the UC system. Currently, each UC campus negotiates and has its own health plan. The university offers multiple plans from four different health insurers to over 55,000 graduate students throughout the state. Consequently, graduate students see a disparity both in coverage and costs among the University’s campuses. A system-wide plan could mend this problem.
At this academic year’s UCSA Congress, the graduate and professional students reelected for the second year, the GSHIP campaign as the Graduate Student Action Item. Over the past year, UCSA has interviewed students and gathered testimonials on how they have been affected by the current state of the GSHIP. From these, UCSA has developed five graduate student priorities for the system-wide plan. The priorities are: mental health, dependent care, reciprocity at all UC campuses, extended coverage and improved network coverage for national and international travel.
In response to a combination of graduate students’ concerns and the system-wide strategic sourcing plan resulting from the current financial situation, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), has formed a system-wide GSHIP work group. The work group is comprised of UCOP strategic sourcing representatives, an administrative member of each UC campus, and two graduate students.
For the past year, the GSHIP Workgroup has developed a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a system-wide graduate student health insurance plan and has since received a number of bids that are in the process of being evaluated. At present, each campus has evaluated the bids with representatives by members of the administration, each campus’ health center, and graduate student representatives and the GSHIP Workgroup is compiling the information in a report for the UCOP. The process is moving at full pace given that the health plan must be negotiated in time for the next academic year.
Over the next months, it is important that students stay informed of the process and emphasize the graduate student GSHIP coverage priorities. It is critical that the Regents are aware that the affordable and comprehensive care that can be reached through a system-wide plan is a central issue for graduate and professional students at the University of California.
From November 1st to November 13th, UCSA will be collecting postcards, signed by students, and bringing those postcards to the November 18th Regents meeting. These postcards will highlight the importance of implementing system-wide GSHIP and will list our graduate student priorities. It’s critical that the Regents know how much reform means to us. The time to act is now!
To contact your GSA rep, Amanda Arsenault, visit http://gsa.ucsf.edu/. To contact your ASUCSF reps, Daniel Luu and Manjeet Singh, visit http://asuc.ucsf.edu/.
Daniel Luu is the Associated Students Co-Vice President of External Affairs.
This article appeared in the November 5, 2009 issue of Synapse.
