LETTERS: Change in Women's Health policy

To the Editor: First, all visits, including those to me Women's Health Unit, have always been confidential and will remain so, barring a subpoena for records from a court of law. If a student wants medical information released, a medical records release form must be signed by the student making the request. Confidentiality of our medical records is as important to us as health care professionals as it is to students. Furthermore, that concern is reflected in our records policies and procedures. Last year, the State of Pennsylvanian mandated that all insurance companies writing policies in the state pay for an annual gynecological visit with a pap smear for all women. This was done in recognition of the importance of this annual check-up to the preventative health of women and the cost effectiveness of such care. All medical professional guidelines, such as the Guidelines for Adolescent Preventative Services, also recognizes this need and include a recommendation for an annual gynecological visit for young adult women. In order to increase the Student Health Service staff capacity to provide more well woman annual gynecological check-ups for students, Student Health instituted a policy to bill that annual visit to insurance for the 1997-98 academic year. This will fund the increased staffing required. There will be no billing of students for this service, even if a particular insurance company denies payment. Other services, some of which have always generated charges, have not been and will not be billed to insurance by Student Health. If a student wants to submit other charges to her insurance for reimbursement, she can use the receipt provided by Student Health to do so. In fact, it is advantageous to students to have the annual gynecological visit billed to insurance even if it is denied because the submission of the charge for the visit may go toward satisfying a deductible that must be met before a student can receive reimbursement for health care services from her insurance carrier. MarJeanne Collins Director, Student Health Services A 'bigger and better' plan for all minorities To the Editor: As president of the Penn Nihon Club, I was disturbed by Andrea Ahles' column "A minority in the majority," (DP, 9/27/97). First of all, the undergraduate Japanese club that we have founded here at Penn is not called the "Nippon Society" and has never been, as she has wrongly stated, but is the Penn Nihon Club, formerly known as the Japan Cultural Society. There is no other undergraduate Japanese club that exists on this campus called the Nippon Society. As an active member in both the Asian Pacific Student Coalition and the United Minorities Council, there are few people who do not know our group's name if they are even aware of what goes on in the movement of minority groups. Secondly, I was dumbfounded by how Ahles has twisted the truth in some of the remarks that she has made. Out of them all, she seems to have confused the term 'Asian' and 'Asian American', using them interchangeably to mean the same thing. Even though we all look Asian, in the sense of appearances, not all of us have the same background. Some of us have come straight from Asia, while others have been born in the United States and raised here all of their lives as a second- or third-generation Asian American. Even though their skin color may be the same, Asian and Asian American mean two very different things. Thirdly, she has stated that the Asian American Studies program is "up and running." It has taken more than ten years just to set up a Asian American studies minor last year and we do not even have a major yet. Professor Chiang and Professor Kao have only been brought in last year, while an important Asian-American counselor, Alvin Alvarez, has moved on and has not yet been replaced. If the African Americans need more help than we do, according to Ahles, how is it that they already have an African American studies program running, complete with a major/minor as well as tenure-track professors, while the Asian Americans are still working hard to even establish a Asian American major program? How is it that the African Americans have their own resource center while the Asian American Resource Center proposal still has not been accepted almost five years after it was originally introduced? And, if it really is the job of the United Minorities Council to keep the pressure on for the permanence plan, then shouldn't Asian Americans be included since they make up for six out of the 12 groups that make up the UMC? These are some of the questions that Ahles need to look into before she starts to make rash comments about the Asian-American movement that has been going on for decades at our University. The recruitment and retention plan has been discussed throughout all minorities groups -- the African Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans as well as the Asian Americans. Our fight is not to share the pie originally called the Minority Permanence Plan. Our common goal is to fight together for a bigger and better pie. No one can do this alone. And finally, when all of the minority groups come together into a single voice, only then can all of us minority groups be called "a minority in the majority." Rina Joko College '99 President, Penn Nihon Club