Graduate Employees Rally: Call for Better Healthcare

Thursday, March 10th, GEO Healthcare Working Group member, Rachel Shulman delivered a statement on the state of graduate healtchare at the Board of Trustees's meeting. Shulman urged the University to make UIUC more competitive by improving graduate and dependent healthcare and delivered 550 postcards from graduate employees, faculty, students, and staff supporting changes to the proposed healthcare plan. Outside of the meeting, graduate employees, spouses, and children rallied to urge the Board of Trustees to vote no on the Unversity's current healthcare proposal since it does not address the concerns of current graduate employees and their families.

Links to Press coverage and video:
Independent Media Center Posting
Daily Illini story

MARCH 10, 2005

RE: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS BOARD OF TRUSTEES VOTES ON PROPOSED HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS AT UIUC

Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) Health Care Working Group Representative Rachel Shulman delivered a speech to the Board of Trustees (BOT) during the public comments section of the BOT meeting on Thursday, March 10. She voiced problems regarding graduate health insurance for UIUC graduate students and their families who rallied outside the Illini Union this morning during the meeting. Shulman presented the BOT with over 500 postcards individually signed by graduate employees and their supporters asking the Board to heed the health care concerns identified by GEO's HCWG in research conducted last Fall. GEO is the union that represents teaching assistants and graduate assistants at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

GEO members and supporters rallied today to urge to BOT to vote "NO" on the proposal and allow for a new proposal that is in touch with the healthcare needs of graduate students and their families.

The Union has been denied access to the complete insurance plan that details benefits and coverage. UIUC officials have still only provided the GEO with a summary of the plan -- one column of one page that summarizes the plans of all the UI campuses, allegedly identical information to what was provided to the BOT on which they must base their decision today. The contract between the BOT and the GEO guaranteed that GEO would be able to provide "input and recommendations to the University with respect to the University's student health insurance program...." and "The Union and the University are committed to working to improve health care benefits available to assistants at the University" (Agreement by and between BOT and GEO 2003-2006: 15, available at www.uigeo.org).

Although the GEO won improvements for graduate employee health care in the 2003-2006 contract, UIUC graduate health care is not competitive with peer institutions. Institutions such as Michigan State, University of Michigan, New York University and others pay the entire insurance premiums for graduate students and offer prescription drug benefit plans whereas UIUC does not.

The UIUC-GEO contract stipulates a minimum stipend of $11,864 for a 9-month appointment, or $1,318.22 per month (UIUC-GEO contract 2003-2006). According to official university housing statistics, the average cost of housing for graduate students living in university housing is $500-600/month. At most, graduate employees remain with $818.22 to live on, before taxes. Currently, the insurance premium is $233 per semester. The proposed plan reduces the premium by $3 per semester.

Good morning. I'd like to thank you for granting me the time to address you this morning, and to use that time to discuss the current state of graduate healthcare here at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the ways in which the summary of proposed changes falls drastically short of filling the needs of graduate students and their families. A large number of students and other supporters have braved the elements to show their dissatisfaction, and these postcards represent over 550 others who stand with us as well. We all urge you to vote against the proposed changes, and ask the University for a plan that is not only more sensitive to graduate student needs, but also helps us to maintain our competitiveness with peer institutions. In addition, and perhaps most worrisome, despite the contractual obligation between the Board of Trustees and the GEO that the University and the Union will work together to improve benefits, the process surrounding changing health care coverage has been anything but transparent and responsive.

Like you, we are proud to be part of the U of I community. Our achievements are wide-ranging, including professors who have won Nobel Prizes and a number 1 basketball team. Each year we attract thousands of applications for graduate study quite literally from all over the world. If we wish to retain our competitive edge, it is imperative that we maintain parity, at a minimum, with our peer institutions in the Big Ten. Our health coverage cannot compete with those of other Big Ten universities. Many other grad students, including those at Michigan can count on benefits like prescription drug coverage, and, indeed, better overall coverage without having to pay ANY premiums out of pocket. Even within the UI system, in which we are the acknowledged flagship campus, our coverage, according to the limited information in the summary, is inferior to that at UIC. Why should these disparities be so great?

The GEO conducted a survey of its members and three concerns came up again and again: Coverage for chronic illnesses, including prescriptions, dependent coverage, and catastrophic coverage. Our lack of adequate coverage in these three key areas can and have set graduate students and their families back thousands of dollars per year. Perhaps worse are those who do not seek medical care at all due to prohibitive cost. An alarming number of grad student spouses and their dependent children literally go without health insurance because the cost is too high, I can tell you from personal experience that once, when I had the flu and my fever had spiked, I called the dial-a-nurse at McKinley and she counseled me NOT to go to the emergency room, even though she thought it was warranted, because she knew how much it would cost. Students at Michigan would not have had to make this choice. I ask you again -- why should we be different?

I should note that most students, when asked on our survey, reported a high level of satisfaction with McKinley. But we also acknowledge that even though it might fill many needs of our graduate students, it is still only a general purpose clinic. It is no substitute for a family doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, or an emergency room. It simply cannot meet the entirety of graduate student medical needs. And, as the recent elimination of the prenatal medical program illustrates, services offered by the university system are not guaranteed from one academic year to the next. If this recent event is any indication, we can, indeed, expect fewer and fewer services at McKinley, not more.

The process by which the proposed changes were decided was long and, we are happy to say, included us. The health care consultant spoke with the GEO's Health Care Working Group and promised to take our extensive research into consideration when making a proposal to the University administration. Despite multiple requests for the complete plan of coverage and benefits, we have only received the summary, which, according to the University, is the same summary upon which you will be making your decision this morning. This summary does not contain information, for example, on the cost of dependent coverage or chronic condition coverage, or many other issues raised in the report we presented to both the Health Care Consultant and to you. How can you make a decision based on an incomplete summary? Making a decision on limited information is, in effect, gambling with the health of thousands of graduate students and their families. Would you make a decision about your own healthcare without all the facts?

I, along with the 550 people who signed these postcards, and the numerous grad students who braved the cold and snow to be here, urge you emphatically not to make an uninformed decision and to vote NO on the proposed changes. A new proposal, undertaken in a transparent manner and which meets the needs of graduate students and their families is desperately needed. You have the power, and are morally obligated, to make this happen.