The Northwestern Graduate Student Association met Monday to discuss action the group is taking to counter recently announced health insurance price hikes planned for the next three years.
In the meeting, GSA executives informed students of recent NU administrative activity, released a rough draft of a petition opposing the increases and formed two new committees to coordinate future GSA activity.
NU administrators announced in early April that graduate health insurance costs would increase from $812 to $1,184 next year.
GSA president Vandna Sinha said that since last week’s meeting administrators told her they have “found money” for a 0.75 percent stipend increase for some graduate employees next year to offset rising insurance costs.
Sinha said some graduate students will receive a stipend increase ranging from $93 to $126 to help defray the $372 health insurance increase.
Sinha also reported receiving e-mails from William Banis, interim vice president for student affairs, and Guy Miller, associate vice president for human resources, saying administrators are working to change the four-month insurance payment system to a 9- or 12-month payment plan to spread the increased costs over the year.
Sinha said a representative from the NU administration will attend the GSA meeting next Monday, pleasing many students who said they felt the administration hasn’t involved them in the rate adjustment process.
“They ought to be treating us with respect and finding out what we think,” said Judith Alexander, a religion graduate student. “They’re making decisions unilaterally, which is outrageous.”
Organizers spent more than half of the meeting explaining research conducted in the past week comparing NU’s graduate insurance plan to similar schools in an effort to find other options to propose to administrators.
Mauricio Drelichman, chairman of the research committee, said the group studied about 35 schools, finding NU’s insurance plan most comparable to those of University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, MIT and Stanford.
Drelichman said the proposed graduate increases next year would align the NU’s plan with comparable schools, but increases planned after that would make the university’s plan 30 percent more expensive than those at the other schools.
He said turning to a private insurance company would not necessarily benefit graduate students because NU has mandated any private plan graduate students use must be “comparable” to NU’s plan by providing at least 95 percent co-insurance and a low deductible.
Under these conditions, Drelichman said NU’s plan would still be 25 percent cheaper than private insurance plans on an individual basis because NU’s “comparable” conditions rule out all but two major private plans.
If NU allows small deductibles, then private group policies might be cheaper than NU’s long-term proposed amounts, Drelichman said.
Tom Noerper, a psychology graduate student, said students may switch to private insurance plan for a limited time period in an attempt to force administrators to adjust the increases.
“It would be a short-term tactic to upset the school’s budget,” Noerper said. “The ultimate goal is to stay within the system and keep Northwestern’s healthcare system running.”
Also during the meeting, GSA released a rough draft of a petition calling for the university to cover the full difference in cost of graduate health insurance next year, assume the entire cost of graduate health insurance beginning with the 2002-03 academic year and inform all graduate employees of “financial burdens” by February the year before any increases occur.
The petition should be finalized and ready for dissemination by next Monday’s meeting, Petition Committee Chairman Coleman Hutchison said.
Before the meeting concluded, GSA members formed a negotiating committee to work with NU administrators and a publicity committee to inform the NU community of GSA’s activities.
