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Wednesday, June 7, 2000
6A
Living in limbo
"It's probably no more problematic than someone who gets out and makes $22,000 and their employer doesn't offer health insurance,"
Some students decide to neglect emergency treatment
Bailey said he understood the dilemma but saw other problems for 20-sometimes.
Kris Graves, Lawrence graduate student, got food poisoning last month. He refused to go to the emergency room. He couldn't afford it.
"The idea is that, when you become an adult, you get dropped off your dad's car insurance, your parents' health insurance," he said. "It is a practice that goes on in the industry, but I can see how it could cause some problems."
In fact, an average emergency room bill from Lawrence Memorial exceeds Grave's prediction. About $300 is charged for the doctor alone, $100 for the facility and maybe $75 for medicine.
Graham Bailey, public relations director for Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Topeka, said his company usually dropped coverage when students turned 24 or got married.
Graves, who was dropped from his parents' insurance on his 24th birthday, thought the emergency room visit would have cost $400 — which is $400 the part-time hotel bellman didn't have.
"I was sick for four days," he said. "It was horrible. I was throwing up every four hours. My girlfriend called Poison Control and helped me out, but I'm sure the ER would have been better."
A representative in the hospital accounting office said payment plans could be arranged. Patients can spread their total bills over six monthly payments, she said. For the bill above, that would be about $75 each month.
health insurance plan, and premiums are lower for healthy young adults, Bailey said.
The University of Kansas offers its own plan. For
students younger than 25, the yearly rate is $480, which averages out to $45 each month. Students age 25 and older pay $856, or $73 each month
Pre-existing conditions, like Oliver's, require a 12-month waiting period before insurance will pay for anv treatment.
through G-M Underwriters.
"That plan wouldn't do me any good at all," she said. "That's fifty bucks a month I just don't have. Especially if it's not helping me."
After some significant lobby efforts, the Graduate Teaching Assistant Coalition secured a health plan for University teaching assistants for the 1999-2000 academic year. The policy is underwritten by Gerber Life Insurance Policy. To be eligible, students must be in a half-time graduate teaching or graduate research position.
Both plans waive deductible fees if the stu
Because teaching assistants are employees, the university pays part of the monthly insurance fee. A teaching assistant 25 or younger will pay $19.40 each month for the comprehensive plan and $7.25 each month for the basic plan. The plan would cost a GTA between 26 and 30 years of age $27.30 for the comprehensive plan and $10.17 each month for the basic.
Oliver isn't a graduate student, and Graves doesn't work as a teaching or research assistant, so neither qualifies for the lower rates.
tant, so neither quaines for the lower rates. But Bailey acknowledged that with student loans and low income, even plans like the University's can be too pricey.
"There's a window in your 20s, I remember being there, where you're losing your youth," Bailey said. "With that comes a whole new world and some whole new responsibilities. Sometimes you're not ready to meet those responsibilities."
Oliver's not. Her livelihood comes from wages earned at a part-time job at the School of Social Welfare and one night each week at The Jazhaus, 926-1/2 Massachusetts St.
This semester, the illness and the stress it brings with it also has cost her a 4.0 grade point average. She's looking at getting the first two B's of her college career.
She says the pain, a dull pain radiating from her lower abdomen, goes on all the time. On a scale of one to 10, with one being a papercut and 10 being sawed in half, she said it averaged a seven.
She might not be able to have children.
She's trying hard now to wean herself off medication.
They haven't confirmed it yet, but doctors think Oliver has endometriosis, a disease occurring where the uterus lining grows outside the uterus. The growth can suffocate the organs around the uterus, like the ovaries or fallopian tubes.
"No one can know what it's like to live with chronic pain until they do it," she said. "It affects your entire being. You don't like to do anything. Your relationships suffer. It just takes over your life."
The usual treatment for endometriosis is a combination of med
ication and surgery. In severe cases, doctors may perform a "radical." surgery — removal of the uterus and both ovaries.
Oliver tries not to think about the worst-case scenarios. She has bills to pay — about $8,000 of them, and most are due on July 1.
Oliver said her doctor's office has threatened to turn her into a collection agency if she doesn't make that deadline.
"I thought if you made a conscientious effort to pay and showed them
what you made, they wouldn't turn you in. But they will," she said.
She tried to get help through Social Rehabilitation Services. SRS could have helped her if she was poor or pregnant, she said, but for a middle-class college student, there is no help.
"There should be help out there for people who are trying to better themselves, trying to do something with their lives," she said. "I'm being punished for not being pregnant."
The best solution, she said, would be for insurance companies to extend coverage for students until they graduate.
Bailey doesn't think that will happen, though.
The cutoff used to be younger than id. "There's just a threshold age. There ways has been. There probably always will."
—Edited by BriAnne Hess
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