Dear Editor:
As natives of New Orleans, we were very disappointed by Brittany Farb’s article “Voices from Katrina: One Year Later.”ÿ While the featured students’ sudden change of college plans was unfortunate, they at least had somewhere to return to.ÿ Many of the real victims of Katrina lost a place to call home- families were separated; parents lost their jobs; a whole city was destroyed. Brittany Farb’s article was not only insensitive but also ignorant to the reality of New Orleans one year later.ÿ Not only has life not “returned to normal,” as stated by Jackie Singer, but little has changed to improve the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.ÿ
There are 42 students at Wash. U. from the state of Louisiana, and many more from the affected Gulf Coast region – surely a more appropriate “voice of Katrina” could be found amongst them.
-Amelia Gariepy & Jenny Boissiere
Class of 2007
Two more views on student health insurance
Dear Editor:
I am writing in response to the letters from Mr. Rick Friedman and Mr. Brian Barnes. As they were writing in two capacities – Mr. Friedman is the parent of an undergraduate student, and Mr. Barnes is a graduate student – so I am responding in two capacities: I am the parent of two undergraduate students, on the one hand, and on the other hand I am the administrator in Arts & Sciences who works with graduate students on health issues.
In role one, let me say that I have no objection whatsoever to paying the health fee for my sons. It is true that they were both insured on my employee insurance plan when the health fee became mandatory, and one of them is still insured through me as well as through the health fee.However, there are two factors contributing to my support of the student health fee with medical insurance included. One is that the best decision for the entire student community on the Danforth Campus is to have adequate health insurance for all students. About $660 per year seems to me a very small price to pay for the peace of mind that comes from knowing no student is attending here without any medical insurance. The other fact is that having both primary and secondary insurance is a better deal for me in case of major medical expenses. When one of my sons had an expensive hospital stay, the student coverage cut the bills in half immediately and paid 80 percent of the remaining half; then my employee plan covered everything else. Had we been using just the employee coverage, we would have paid 20 percent of the whole bill: enough more than the zero amount we paid that the health fee was a very good deal indeed.
In role two, I would point out that Student Health Services is enormously responsive to the concerns of graduate students. It has been known for some time that prescription drug coverage is a high priority for the post-baccalaureate population. Last year, discount cards could be bought to defray some prescriptions somewhat. This year, a plan can be purchased that defrays more prescriptions a larger amount. Progress is, admittedly, incremental, but it is steady, driven in part by the members of the Graduate Student Health Advisory Committee (GSHAC). Changing insurance companies this year won our students fuller coverage and more options, without any increase in fee, than had been available in past years. Moving to a new facility for Student Health Services won our students better care and more of it, also without any increase in fee.
Still without any increase in fee, the integration of Health Promotion and Wellness into the new SHS facility has made its programs accessible to graduate as well as undergraduate students. There is room for further improvement, especially in the area of prescription drug coverage, but the track record of the University suggests that improvements will continue to be made.
-Nancy P. Pope
Associate Dean, Arts & Sciences, Graduate School