Despite detractors’ claims, SHIP is very student-friendly

Black is a fourth-year Ph.D student in health services in the
School of Public Health.

By Jeanne T. Black

The UCLA Student Health Advisory Committee agrees with Idan Ivri
that effective communication is essential in helping students to
understand and make the best use of the Student Health Insurance
Plan (“UCLA’s
student health plan is faulty,” Viewpoint, Feb. 5).

We also believe the UCLA Student Health administration made
significant efforts to accomplish this and has been responsive to
student concerns.

When the University of California made health insurance
mandatory for all students, it became a condition of enrollment and
part of UC registration fees. This is why it was automatically
billed to students’ BAR accounts and registration fee
deadlines applied. In this sense, enrolling in SHIP is not like
choosing to purchase an individual health plan or signing up for an
employer’s plan. It is the waiver that is voluntary, not the
health plan.

As Ivri notes, Student Health sent a letter to all continuing
undergrads in June 2001, notifying them of the change. In addition,
the notice was printed directly on each month’s BAR statement
and was posted on the Web in the Schedule of Classes and on the
My.UCLA pages.

Some students let their parent(s) handle their health coverage
and pay their UCLA fees. However, UCLA is required by law to treat
those 18 and older as adults and to send information and notices to
students, not their parents. One way or another, it’s the
student’s responsibility to read the information and take
appropriate action.

Student Health continues to work to make the waiver process as
easy as possible. The online waiver page, for example, has several
benefits for students:

First, there are no “lost” paper waiver forms.
Access to the waiver page from anywhere in the world is available
24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Second, there are fewer parties involved (paper waiver forms
were printed by Student Accounting who sent them to a vendor who
mailed BAR bills).

Third, deduction of insurance from fees is automatic, instead of
waiting for manual processing of paper waiver information.

For fall 2002, the waiver page will be available from June
through the fee payment deadline of Sept. 20. Because the insurance
is a registration fee, in the past, Student Health needed to wait
until the fee was assessed before it could be waived, so the waiver
page wasn’t open until Sept. 1 when fall fees were
assessed.

The reason health insurance is mandatory is to assure that
students have access to needed health care and to protect them from
the financial burden of receiving care. This is why international
students with government insurance are not eligible to waive SHIP.
As Ivri notes, health insurance is complicated in the United
States. Health care providers do not accept foreign insurance.
There is no feasible way for them to verify that their coverage is
in effect or to determine the covered benefits. There is also no
way for them to bill and get paid and due to fluctuating currency
exchange rates, there would be no way to know what the final
payment would be.

Unfortunately, anyone with foreign insurance coverage would be
regarded as uninsured and required to pay up front in cash.
Individuals who can’t do that are referred to the Los Angeles
County health system. SHIP is an affordable way to avoid that
scenario. It is true the United States is alone among developed
countries in not providing some form of universal insurance, but
unfortunately, that’s the way it is.

We endorse Ivri’s finding that SHIP provides a good value
for students. Current undergraduate enrollment in SHIP is now about
13,000. Many of these students would have been uninsured without
SHIP. Some of them were formerly covered under a parent’s
plan and realized that the SHIP benefits are more generous and cost
less than the private coverage.

The SHIP benefits are custom designed based on the types of
services used by students. Our plan puts more money into actual
benefits than a commercial health plan because we don’t need
to pay for their expensive advertising and sales force.

Commercial health plans also spend a tremendous amount of money
contracting with individual doctors and hospitals to form and
maintain their networks. SHIP doesn’t need to do that ““
our network is the UCLA Medical Center, acknowledged as being
“The Best in the West.”

And of course, no private health plan would have an on-campus
insurance office to help students understand their benefits and
assist in billing and reimbursement issues.

No complicated system is ever perfect. SHAC is your committee,
made up of four undergraduate representatives appointed by USAC,
and four grad students appointed by GSA, and we want your input
regarding how to make Student Health Services and SHIP work better
for students.

Contact SHAC with questions at [email protected] or (310) 206-3369.
Michelle Cerecerez, Emily Kwong, Tu-Uyen Nguyen, Rosalio Rubio,
Cathy Taylor and Vinh Phan, also members of SHAC, contributed to
this submission.