Insurance options for Ph.D. students are overpriced and insufficient
Editor’s Note: This is a guest opinion that has been submitted by members of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. All guest opinions are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for clarity and conciseness by Thresher editors.
Doctoral students at Rice are given insufficient health insurance options especially compared to institutions with graduate student unions. Aetna’s graduate student health insurance plan leaves students with significant costs compared to the minimum annual stipend. Additionally, the available Aetna plan offers insufficient benefits when compared both to medical insurance plans at peer institutions and to the non-subsidized Wellfleet plan – Rice’s alternative option for international students.
The university provides a subsidy to cover the Aetna premium which costs $3,448 annually per insured person for each policy-holding graduate student, spouse and up to 2 children. This plan covers medical and basic vision insurance but does not cover dental insurance, which has to be purchased at an additional cost.
With the subsidy, single Ph.D. students pay $620 for annual coverage for themselves under Aetna and $2,586 each for their spouse and up to two children. This means a Ph.D. student with a family could pay up to $8,378 per year — 25% of the minimum annual stipend of $34,000 and 29% of the after-tax minimum stipend amount.
Compared to other institutions, this presents an enormous cost. For example, at Johns Hopkins – as per the most recent contract between the graduate student workers’ union and the university – premiums for Ph.D. student and family coverage are paid entirely by the university, including medical, dental and vision insurance. Other universities like Columbia and Duke and NYU also offer full or discounted coverage of premiums for doctoral students.
On top of the cost of premiums, Aetna offers poor coverage compared to Wellfleet – an alternative student health insurance plan for international Ph.D. students that is not subsidized by Rice. The available Aetna plan has an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,500 for an individual and $13,000 for a family with in-network providers compared to $2,500 for an individual and $5,000 for a family under Wellfleet. Under the Aetna plan, a student with dependent family members could face costs amounting to almost 40% of their annual stipend (almost 45% after tax) in the event of a serious medical emergency. The Aetna plan also has higher co-insurance costs for routine medical care, and its premium is almost double that of Wellfleet – though because Rice refuses to subsidize the premium for this plan, Ph.D. students are disincentivized from enrolling.
Ph.D. students have little to no influence on the administration’s decisions surrounding student health insurance. The two graduate students who sit on the Health Insurance Committee do not have a vote. While they can present findings from the Graduate Student Association survey on student satisfaction with insurance, university administration has not introduced a more affordable plan.
Furthermore, despite more affordable co-insurance costs and lower premiums, the administration expressed a desire to eliminate the Wellfleet option altogether in the future.
A key difference between Rice and its peer institutions is the presence of a graduate student union, seen at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Duke, among other institutions. Research shows that doctoral students represented by unions see dramatically reduced costs to health insurance and better coverage.
As shown across the country, the surest way forward is to begin to realize the power of our collective voice as graduate student workers and organize. Ph.D. students should get involved with efforts such as the Rice Grad Campaign to begin organizing unions on our own campus, and they can start by checking out its Instagram page.
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