The Graduate and Professional Student Council focused Monday night on reviewing student health insurance increases estimated for next year. Dr. William Purdy, assistant clinical professor and interim medical director for Student Health, spoke along with Dan Hill, founder of Hill, Chesson and Woody—the insurance firm that brokers insurance for Duke—about current and future insurance costs for graduate students.
Insurance rates have risen on average 14 percent annually due to inflations in the health sector. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina, the provider of Duke’s student health insurance, hiked costs 21.9 percent last year to $1,310 per student. Purdy said he expected the costs to increase another 20 percent this fall, raising concerns among cash-strapped graduate students.
“What determines premiums next year are the number of claims and dollar amounts this year,” Hill said. “Emergency room visits make up the most expensive of these claims.”
Hill said 79 percent of graduate students are insured under Duke’s plan and 77 percent of those students made some sort of health insurance claim over the past year. The claims amounted to more than $13 million for the 2003 to 2004 school year.
Hill said while some individuals may never set foot in the Student Health Center, some people visit emergency rooms numerous times each year. “You need to encourage the people that have got these medical conditions to take better care of themselves,” he said.
Megan Burns, GPSC attorney general and second-year public policy student, said the group would help educate students. “GPSC must continue to raise awareness of student health so that, overtime, these insurance rate increases will slow down,” she said.
Also discussed at the meeting was Duke University Union’s recent increase in programming fees for graduate and professional students. GPSC President Heather Dean, a fifth-year graduate student in neurobiology, said this increase will take effect in the 2006-2007 school year.
Senior Kevin Parker, president of the Union, said steadily increasing prices in the entertainment industry necessitated a raise in graduate student contributions. He added that well-known speakers may now cost more than $22,000 to bring to campus, more than double the average costs of the early 1990s.
The annual fee for graduate and professional students stands currently at $10.50 per person while the undergraduate fee is set at $80.00 per person. The fee increase for graduate and professional students will be $9.50, bringing the annual payment for each student to $20.00.
Parker said the increase would help pay for added programming and increased advertising to encourage graduate students to attend more events that may appear to solely attract undergraduates.
“We have tried to increase our visibility to graduate students a lot more this year than in the past,” Parker said. “We want to know what sort of programming applies to graduate and professional students.”
Parker also compared Duke’s fees to similar ones at competing universities. For example, graduate students at Harvard University pay $50 for programming, and fees at similar schools average approximately $46.
The Union hosts campus events such as the recent Ben Folds concert and weekly movies in Griffith Film Theater. It runs on a nearly $1 million budget supplied by student fees and event revenue. While a majority of the Union’s events are attended largely by undergraduate students, all Union events are open to graduate and professional students as well. GPSC has no power to prevent Union fee increases.
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