Health plan a concern for grad students

Healthcare, a basic necessity often taken for granted in the University community, has been at the heart of the unionization debate as Penn's graduate employees balance their stipends and medical bills on a student plan. While administrators point to recent improvements in coverage and affordability to show that healthcare at Penn can evolve without a graduate student union, some union advocates have voiced skepticism over the University's willingness to maintain a flexible plan specially designed for graduate employees. "It's livable if you're healthy," Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania spokesperson Joanna Kempner said. "But if you have a chronic condition or if you have dependents, then it is subpar." Even graduate students who said their experiences with Student Health Service have been positive also empathize with struggling colleagues, especially those with children. "It seems fine," second-year computer science doctoral candidate Ameesh Makadia said. "It's free for me right now. We don't get dental care, but particularly for me, that's not a problem because I'm still covered on a dental plan outside the University." Nevertheless, Makadia recognized that "if you do have a family, this would not be the proper plan, or the ideal plan at least." "Especially for the humanities majors," he continued. "Their stipends are so low, [the Penn Student Insurance Plan] isn't livable." But according to Deputy Provost Peter Conn, the current student health plan was designed for and largely by students through the Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee. "There are about 20 members on that committee.... Twelve are students, and 10 of the 12 are graduate and professional students," he said, adding that the current plan had been presented to and approved by the committee after a series of public meetings last spring. Conn also said that healthcare and health insurance across the United States is in a state of crisis. "We... have a society in which over 40 million people have no health insurance at all," he said. "We are in a crisis... and the Penn Student Insurance Plan is coping with that crisis.... Providing what the students themselves tell us is an excellent plan under the circumstances." Some, however, remain unconvinced and maintain that healthcare under a union would alleviate some of the existing problems. "The University wants to make this sound like the most radical thing they've ever heard of," Kempner said, noting that the University of Michigan's three decades of collective bargaining with its graduate employees has only improved its healthcare and quality of life on campus. "I really think [Michigan] is the best place to look," Kempner said. "They have secured benefits for dependents, and Michigan... just got subsidized childcare, which is great." At Penn, however, students who have acquired an extra family member or two have a more difficult road ahead of them. PSIP "really discriminates against older students who bring a lot to our program," Kempner said. Female graduate students looking to start families are also faced with a difficult decision, according to Kempner. "It's hard on the tenure track, it's hard in graduate school, it's really something on [women's] minds," she said. "We want to pursue a passion, but we don't want to put brakes on our lives." But according to administrators, although it is not free, dependent coverage in its current state is adequate. "The plan already incorporates a significant cross-subsidy for dependents," Conn countered. "In other words, the cost of the premium for dependents... while high... is already literally thousands of dollars less" than care outside the plan. Administrators have also suggested in a number of flyers and statements that healthcare would decline in quality and likely increase in price should GET-UP win collective bargaining rights. "If graduate students... were to be defined to be employees, they would no longer be eligible to participate" in PSIP, Conn said. "There are laws that would require those students to drop out of the student health insurance plan and negotiate for an employee plan. "We don't know what the result of that negotiation would be," he added. "But I can be very confident that the plan that would emerge... would be less attractive for the money than the plan the students have now." At Michigan, though, this obstacle has been overcome with the creation of a "separate graduate student health plan called GradCare," Kempner said. The plan allows graduate employees outside the unit to enroll in a plan tailored to meet graduate students' needs, giving them "the option to be folded into other employee healthcare" when they are eligible for union membership, Kempner said. "It's all negotiated. That's the... key," she concluded. "Everything they say might happen really never has happened."

Penn votes: The union debate

With the graduate student union elections just one week away, Penn's campus is gearing up to vote -- and sorting through the numerous facets of the complex decision. So before the elections take place on Feb. 26 and 27, The Daily Pennsylvanian will examine some of the various issues surrounding the unionization debate, such as healthcare and tax status. As you read, please share your ideas regarding graduate student unionization below.