Despite recent initiatives to increase compensation for graduate students, many Ph.D. candidates remain frustrated with the University health insurance policy.
All students are required to have health insurance while enrolled in the University. If they do not choose to be covered by the University's insurance provider, they must submit a waiver assuring alternate coverage.
Under Penn's 2004-05 plan -- which is run through Aetna Inc. -- students are charged $2,072 for the school year, which is a 10.2 percent increase from last year. For students who claim one dependent, the cost is $4,900, 9.5 percent higher than in 2003-04. And for students with more than one dependent, the University plan charges $8,207.
For graduate students, the added burden of health insurance along with other living expenses can be taxing. This is especially true if the graduate student has a spouse or children on the health plan.
"I can't really afford health insurance," said Joan Mazelis, a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department. "Health insurance premiums have more than doubled since starting school, and we don't have another option."
Mazelis is in the seventh year of her doctoral work. The Graduate Division of the School of Arts and Sciences covers the health insurance of full-time students for the first five years of a doctoral program.
The policy of SAS paying for students' health insurance was only instituted in the 2001-02 academic year, three years after Mazelis began her studies. She argues that the policy should be retroactively enforced so that her insurance is paid for during her seventh year.
Mazelis sent an e-mail on Tuesday voicing her complaints to the administration. The list of recipients included University President Amy Gutmann, Interim Provost Peter Conn and Associate Graduate Dean of Arts and Sciences Jack Nagel.
While Nagel has said he is sympathetic to Mazelis' predicament, he refused the request to compensate her for her insurance.
"It is an issue we discuss, and we are aware of the difficulty," Nagel said of the hardship of graduate students paying health insurance costs, adding that there is limited funding to pay for all student health care.
The problem is not only the cost of health insurance, but also the health insurance package itself.
The plan is the "same one for graduates as for undergraduates, even though graduate students have [an] all different set of needs," Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania Chairman Joe Drury said.
According to Drury, one in five graduate students does not have health insurance paid for by the University.
"Even Temple [University] has a better plan," he said, adding that the Penn plan is "very expensive for anybody with partners or children."
These concerns, however, have not been ignored by the administration and are being addressed in the Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee.
SHIAC members include undergraduates, graduate students, professors and professional staff.
They are currently "looking at this year's plan and soliciting feedback from students," SHIAC Chairman and professor of Classical Studies Joseph Farrell said.
Farrell said that he is aware of the concerns over the inflexibility and high cost of the plan, but assures that these topics are under constant discussion in the committee. He added, however, that his committee has made only "incremental changes."
"We tweak the system we have, but we haven't been starting from scratch," Farrell said.
Agreeing with Farrell, SHIAC Vice Chairman for Policy and Graduate and Professional Student Assembly representative Kevin Jude said, "Our plan is pretty good but ... very expensive."
Jude added that he blames the insurance companies, not Penn, for the cost of the policy.
"Health care costs are skyrocketing," he said. "The American health system is not very conducive to giving everyone health care who needs it at a price they can afford."
Indeed, USA Today reported that, in 2003, health insurance premiums rose 13.9 percent nationwide.
"We should have national health insurance like any other advanced country," Nagel said. The University "can't make up for national policy."
SHIAC will hold an open forum on the current health insurance plan on Monday, Nov. 8.
