Same sex partners may be insured

Graduate students will probably be able to obtain health insurance for same sex partners or spouses next year, despite the current policy which only allows students to buy insurance for their spouses of opposite sex. Under the current policy of Mega Life -- the insurance carrier which covers graduate students -- a student may purchase insurance for a spouse for an additional fee of about $2,000. Same sex spouses or partners cannot purchase insurance at all through the carrier. But Associate Vice Provost for University Life Larry Moneta told graduate student government representatives in a meeting Tuesday that at the University's urging, Mega Life will likely grant homosexual couples the same insurance coverage it sells to heterosexual couples. Moneta said that when he spoke with Mega Life representatives, they were very receptive to the students' demands. "I was very pleased," Moneta said. "It's a sign we're working with a pretty progressive carrier." Graduate and Professional Student Assembly chairperson Allen Orsi said the University will still have to work out the specifics for determining that someone is in fact a partner and not merely a friend who is trying to get an insurance break. "It's going to be our responsibility to logistically decide what we call domestic partners," Orsi said. Still, graduate students say they have major problems with the current insurance carrier that will not be solved even with this concession. At a Graduate Student Associations Council meeting Tuesday, many students expressed outrage at the high cost of health insurance and the amount of bureaucracy students must overcome to receive proper answers to their questions about insurance. Many students said they were angry that they had to pay $1,000 out of their yearly $9,000 stipend for health insurance when graduate students in many other schools pay only about half that. "There doesn't seem to be any reason why health benefits couldn't be covered under tuition and benefits," GSAC representative Leonard Reuter said. But Moneta said there are two major reasons that University graudate students pay more for health insurance than students in many other schools do. One is that Pennsylavania does not allow insurance carriers to investigate students' prior medical conditions. Even if a student has a serious illness, the carrier has to reimburse medical costs, whereas "in other states, they save themselves the headache." Moneta also cited high health-care costs in Philadelphia as another reason for the high cost of student insurance. But students also said that another major problem with insurance is the lack of resources to answer problems and complaints, and the scarcity of people who are knowledgable about current insurance regulations and procedures. "It's ridiculous that you can't get an answer about what you're going to be charged for," GSAC representative Susan Garfinkle said. This complaint was echoed by many students. Orsi said that "there is a bureaucratic problem" and that it seems that "if you contact enough people the [medical] bill is waived."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.