Genevieve Hay | Student Life

Williams Pharmacy, the family-owned pharmacy located just across from the North Side, closed its doors on Tuesday after the Williams family sold it to Walgreens. Signs in front of the stocked shelves inform customers that prescriptions will be transferred to Walgreens.

The pharmacy, located on the corner of Big Bend Ave. and Forest Park Parkway, had been serving Washington University students for 59 years. But the Williams family, who owned a chain of four pharmacies in St. Louis, sold three of them, including Williams, to Walgreens.

The pharmacy sold prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs as well as toiletries, snacks and wine. Its closing came as a surprise to customers, who have been coming to the location all week with the expectation that the pharmacy would be open.

Walgreens will not be opening another drugstore in the facility. The next nearest drugstore for students is the Walgreens south of campus near Schnucks.

“I liked Williams because it was a small neighborhood pharmacy and it was easier to go there and pick something up than go to Walgreens,” senior Phil Paradise said.

Students living north or just west of campus will now have to go farther to Walgreens, Target, Schnucks or to SHS to meet their medical needs.

The prescriptions from Williams Pharmacy have been put into the Walgreens database, and now the Walgreens automated phone message says, “Walgreens would like to welcome William’s Pharmacy customers.”

“We’ll make this a seamless transition for those customers,” Walgreens spokesperson Robert Elfinger said. “We thought [buying and closing these stores] was a good opportunity to serve more patients in the St. Louis market.”

Elfinger would not disclose how much Walgreens paid for the pharmacies. A Williams spokesperson could not be reached on Sunday.

Student Health Services sometimes referred students to Williams if they needed something after hours or had a prescription for an antibiotic or pain pill that SHS couldn’t fill until the next day, SHS pharmacist Shannon Gergen said.

“Now we’ll end up having to suggest Walgreens,” Gergen said.

Students will also have to go elsewhere for over-the-counter drugs, which Gergen says SHS carries but only gives out by prescription. He says this is because of the University’s policy of avoiding products with sales tax as much as possible.

“It was convenient and when you’re sick, you don’t want to trek all the way to Walgreens to get your meds, especially if you live in the Village,” junior Sophia Fox-Dichter said. “It had everything you need and the people were friendly.”

The Williams pharmacies were run by two brothers, Brett and Rick Williams. Their father, Maurice, started the franchise.

Williams also sold the Clarkson Square Pharmacy in Chesterfield and Prescription Plus at 5 Maryland Plaza in the Central West End. Their Ladue location remains open and is run by the family.

“My family and I have been committed to serving this community my entire life,” Rick Williams said in a press release on the Williams Pharmacy website. “I’m proud to own and operate Ladue Pharmacy and I’m excited about the future of our business.”

Normally, the fact that I am younger than most people here doesn’t affect me at all. It’s always a bit of a surprise when people hear I won’t turn 18 for another few weeks, but they get over it. The only time my age became an issue was when I attempted to get checked out at SHS.

Earlier this year, I developed a bad cold. My head was hurting, my throat was sore and achy, and I had the chills often associated with fever. After a few days of hoping it would go away, I dragged myself to the health center to get myself checked out. While the staff at the health center let me make an appointment and led me to a room without any mention of my age, it was only after I had been waiting for a little while that someone stopped by to confirm my minor status. And subsequently told me they had to track down my mom and get her permission in order to examine me.

I was confused. So I can legally drive, move almost 900 miles away from home by myself and get a flu shot with potentially serious reactions, but I can’t have someone look at my throat without phoning my mom? That doesn’t seem to make sense.

If we compare the flu shot and its potential dangers side by side with a typical doctor’s visit, it would seem easy to determine which is more likely to require parental permission. At a doctor’s appointment, someone comes in and checks your temperature, nose, throat and ears and feels your glands to determine if you are potentially sick. The most dangerous thing they’ll probably do is swab the back of your throat for a strep test or perhaps refer you for further testing, which, although possibly painful, is not really all that hazardous. The sheet that I received with my registration form for my flu shot, however, came with a list of potential reactions, including soreness/swelling, fever, aches and itching. In some rare cases, it can even cause a serious allergic reaction.

If someone’s status as a minor requires special treatment, it should be the same across the board. If the law requires parental permission for minors to have any medical treatment, the least that could happen is that the practice not be stricter in some areas than in others. Or perhaps parents acknowledging that their child is capable of making medical decisions for him- or herself could sign a blanket waiver. Either way, the system as it stands right now is uneven and perhaps even a bit hypocritical. Wash. U. makes a big deal out of treating its students like adults, and yet the idea that someone perhaps a little younger than the rest of the students cannot get their cold checked out without parental permission is a bit ludicrous. Then again, perhaps it makes more sense to allow students to expose themselves to a potentially dangerous allergic reaction than get their throats swabbed.

Let’s fix that.

This leads us to question why Student Health Services (SHS) cut EST funding by $8,000. Nothing about this service renders it ineffective enough to warrant a budget cut. EST, which is jointly funded by SHS and Student Union, receives block funding from SU and therefore cannot request more money from SU until next year. Even then, there is no guarantee that the student body will approve the new funds.

We recognize that SHS, like all other University departments, faces budget difficulties in light of the economic recession. Painful decisions must be made without sacrificing essential services such as mental health counseling and treatment for eating disorders. It seems that the hands of SHS are at least partially tied. But given that SHS does not extend care past business hours, we believe that administrators should not have made cuts to EST, the only source of emergency and late-night care for students other than calling 911.

SHS administrators have not returned several phone calls from Student Life regarding this matter last week.

As a result of this cut, each student will have to pay up-front costs of approximately $1,000 for the certification course required to become a member of EST, with some of the money being refunded upon completing a certain number of hours on-call. According to EST director Stephanie Higgins, this cut will not affect the services that EST provides.

What it could do, though, is seriously limit interested students’ ability to join EST. Few college students have an extra $1,000 lying around, and even fewer can actually spend a few months waiting for reimbursement.

Especially in light of recent initiatives that aim to promote socioeconomic diversity, we feel that this fee is unfortunate. We encourage Student Financial Services to look into assigning grants to students interested in working for EST, and we strongly recommend that the Diversity Affairs Council and Washington University For Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (WU/FUSED) investigate how this fee will affect the students who wish to join EST.

We find it particularly unfortunate that, at a school with stellar residential capacities, high tuition and well-ranked food, more money can’t be found for EST –a service that is valuable for both the students it employs and the students it serves. This is a classic problem of budget allocation that the University often must deal with, solely on the basis of its size: Because money is funneled into many administrative departments, bureaucratic complication often stands in the way of efficient allocation.

EST has traditionally received block funding from Student Union along with funding from Student Health Services (SHS). Because EST is allocated a specified amount of money for two years through block funding, the group cannot appeal to SU Treasury to replace the money.

Because of the cuts, EST is now reworking the reimbursement system it has set up for incoming EST members in order to account for its deficit.

Students training to become emergency medical technicians through the EST program will now be expected to pay the entire cost of training up front. They will be repaid a portion of that cost after completing a predetermined number of hours on call.

It costs approximately $1,000 dollars for each freshman to become a certified EMT, including the costs of tuition and textbooks for the EMT training course offered through Forest Park Community College. In the past, EST subsidized a majority of that cost.

Students outside of the EST program will not be as affected by these cuts.

“[The budget cut] won’t affect any operations of the team. It hasn’t yet, and it won’t,” said Kevin Stephenson, EST field director.

EST director Stephanie Higgins ensured that the services will still remain.

“There will be no perceptible difference [in the services offered]. We are still going to be highly trained; we are still going to respond to every call; we are still going to keep buying all the equipment we need,” said Higgins.

EST plans to ask for an increase in their block funding next voting period in order to continue operations as usual in future years.

The majority of EST’s current budget goes to certifying freshmen as state-licensed EMTs, repairs and maintenance of the EST truck, equipment purchases and a savings fund for a new EST truck.

“EST provides a great service to students. We provide 24/7 free emergency medical care,” Higgins said.

Stephenson therefore highlights the value of the EST program.

“When students are worried and not sure if they have to go to the hospital or not, instead of having to pay $500 dollars for an ambulance ride, they can call us,” Stephenson said.

SHS did not return several inquiries from Student Life over the past week.

Washington University offers emergency contraceptives to its students. However, unlike most sellers the University does not offer Plan B, an emergency contaceptive, to everyone. Student Health Services (SHS) dispenses emergency contraception only to women.

Plan B, or the “morning after pill,” is a contraceptive that a woman can take to prevent pregnancy after having sex. Although it is not as effective at preventing pregnancy as condoms are, Plan B is 95 percent effective when taken within 24 hours of having unprotected sex and 89 percent effective when taken within 72 hours. It can be taken up to five days after sexual activity, although the pregnancy prevention rates become lower.

The medication is available from SHS on campus at a discounted price of $30. It is also available at places like Schnucks and Walgreen’s for $40 to $50.

Emergency contraceptives are available to both women and men at local pharmacies, but only to women at SHS.

Peer institutions like Northwestern University provide emergency contraception to any student who wants to pick it up, regardless of gender.

SHS staff maintain that the primary reason for denying emergency contraception to men is their general policy of giving medicine directly to the people who will use it.

“It’s a medicine that’s indicated for prevention of pregnancy in females, so we like to dispense medicine to the people that the medicine is intended for,” said Melissa Ruwitch, the assistant director of SHS and chief of health promotion services.

Junior Maria Santos, president of the Committee Organized for Rape Education (C.O.R.E.), does not agree with the policy.

“It takes away really important options to people who are in situations that are clearly stressful,” Santos said.

Pamela Summers, the executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, an organization dedicated to protecting women’s right to choose, also criticized the policy.

“If you have some man who wants to take the initiative to go and get it, why shouldn’t you give it to him?” Summers said. “It is a surprise to me that Wash. U. would not have one of the most proactive and sophisticated policies around, because that is what we would expect Wash. U. to have.”

But senior Jimmy Cox, co-president of Men Organized for Rape Education (M.O.R.E.), agrees with University policy.

“Men will never be using it and they’d always be getting it for someone else, and if that’s the case, I don’t see why the woman can’t get it herself,” Cox said.

Cox also raised the point that men could coerce their girlfriends into taking emergency contraception.

“It can just as easily be abused that men could force women to take it, so I do think that the risk outweighs the benefit,” Cox said.

To exacerbate the problem, due to the overflow of students entering SHS, each student only gets a very brief consultation. Of course, this is to be expected from a relatively small clinic that has to take care of a comparatively large student body, but the real problem lies in the price structure: I have yet to hear a compelling reason that health insurance from the University is mandatory.

I understand the main motivation behind making health insurance mandatory: as a matter of public health. If everyone is insured, the risk of disease breakouts is theoretically reduced. I admit that making health insurance optional does pose the risk of having people uninsured, and some students could opt out of the University’s health coverage while having no alternative insurance. Such a gap could, in theory, lead to an outbreak due to one infected vector of transmission. But I am still not convinced that these problems will surface at a school like Washington University. It’s painfully obvious that Wash. U. is largely composed of privileged students from wealthy backgrounds. If there is a risk from uninsured students, the risk would be very small, and I have a hard time buying the notion that a significant number of students would opt out of University health coverage if they did not have an insurance plan of their own.

While it may be naïve to assume that there would be no risks from making University coverage optional, the benefits outweigh the risks. Currently, every student pays a mandatory fee for health services that most will never use. Most serious problems end up with the bill passed to a larger hospital anyway, and the mandatory insurance does not cover prescription medication, which is (for better or worse) what most students will end up going to SHS for in the first place.

Of course, this sketch of an argument does not get at the true root of the issue, and I don’t expect to make a flawless argument in 500 words. But I believe that the status quo is equally unacceptable. We pay a significant sum of money for health coverage that we don’t necessarily need, and the result is not only the draining of pocketbooks, but also coverage that meets neither the needs nor the demands of many students.

Ultimately, giving the freedom of choice back to the students is the best option, and one that should be taken seriously as an alternative to the current system, which is inadequate in a very real way.

AJ is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at asundar@wustl.edu.

(Brittany Meyer | Student Life)

With national health care reform on the horizon, health insurance is a hot topic among Washington University students. Some say they are unhappy with the school’s Aetna student health insurance plan, which is mandated for all University undergraduate and graduate students.

“I already have my family insurance at home,” freshman Elizabeth Mitnick said. “So my parents aren’t happy about having to pay extra because we’re already covered.”

Freshman Micajah Dudley said he dislikes the University’s requirement that students obtain referrals from on-campus medical professionals before seeking Aetna-covered treatment from doctors outside Student Health Services. Dudley, who recently suffered a sports injury, said he found the process tedious.

“You have to go in to schedule an appointment for a referral for an appointment,” Dudley said.

Freshman Christine Diepenbrock said she is unhappy with Aetna’s prescription drug coverage, which is not included in the basic plan.

Aetna provides students with the option of purchasing a prescription drug plan for an additional $78. Students can also obtain more coverage through the Optional Alternate Medical Plan, which costs $22 more than the basic plan.

The University’s previous student health care plan, which was provided through Great-West Healthcare, also included prescription drug coverage as an additional option.

Graduate student Mark Smith said he feels the student health insurance plan does not work well for graduate students.

“We have different needs than the undergraduates,” he said.

Outgoing students wary of possibility of losing health insurance

One health care provision currently being debated in Congress would allow parents to extend their health benefits to children until the age of 27. Still, students are preparing for the risk of losing health insurance in the outside world.

Senior Jake Laperruque hopes his future graduate school will provide a health insurance option. But like many graduate students, Laperruque must face paying off his large student debt and said he is not sure whether he will be able to pay for insurance in the future.

Associate Dean for Public Health Timothy McBride recommends that graduates find a plan that covers preventative care visits.

“Students may be best off buying a plan that has some relatively high deductibles because then the premiums will be much lower,” McBride wrote in an e-mail to Student Life. “Also look out for pre-existing condition exclusions.”

McBride noted that students should keep in mind that in a medical emergency, they could face large deductibles.

One other available option for University students is to continue their coverage with Aetna by enrolling in the 2009-10 WUSTL Continuation Plan.

The future of health care in America

McBride wrote that he is optimistic about government health care reform in America and the effect it will have on college graduates.

“The future actually looks pretty bright,” McBride wrote. “I believe we will pass comprehensive health reform this year.”

Laperruque also said he would like to see health care reform.

“There needs to be comprehensive health care reform where all Americans can get access [to medical aid],” Laperruque said.

Tests completed at Student Health Services (SHS) concluded that the students have influenza A. Almost all of the influenza A virus currently circulating is thought to be novel H1N1 influenza, the virus that causes swine flu.

The University announced the campus’s first suspected case of swine flu late Tuesday evening. Two cases were announced on Wednesday, and the fourth on Thursday. All of the sick students are expected to make full recoveries.

“I suspect that we will see more in the next days and weeks,” Alan Glass, director of Student Health Services, wrote in an e-mail to Student Life.

He wrote that these cases are not unexpected because “this virus has been affecting college and university students nationally with some frequency.”

In late June, the CDC released a statement estimating that there had been at least 1 million cases of swine flu in the United States, most of them undiagnosed or unreported.

The affected students are currently in self-isolation in accordance with University flu protocol, which is based on recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At least two of the students live in on-campus housing.

As a preparatory measure, the University appointed an Emerging Infectious Disease Task Force last spring when the swine flu epidemic first hit. Glass heads this taskforce.

The University is asking affected students to remain in their living spaces until they are fever-free for 24 hours without fever-reducing medication.

Thursday marked the second day that the University offered seasonal influenza vaccinations. Seventy students were immunized on Wednesday and another 90 on Thursday.

“It is extremely important for students to have flu shots this year,” Glass wrote.

The University asks all students and faculty to not attend classes or work if they are feeling ill. Subsequently, professors and lecturers were asked not to penalize students if they miss class for health reasons.

The symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of seasonal flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches and headache. Some people with novel H1N1 flu have also reported vomiting and diarrhea. The University encourages those who experience these symptoms to contact Student Health Services at 314-935-6666.