Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Council of Representatives Notes

Big Red Barn Greenhouse April 10, 2000 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by Pat Carr, Vice President of the 1999–2000 GPSA, at 5:00 p.m..

Special Orders A) Presentation by Dean Cohen on Student Health Insurance

P.Carr introduced Walter Cohen, Dean of the Graduate School, to the assembled members.

Dean Cohen informed members that the proposed plan for Cornell to fund the health insurance premiums for students receiving assistantships has yet to receive formal budgetary approval.  The meeting for this will occur on April 11.  Therefore, while he is very optimistic about the plan, he wanted to make it clear that this proposal is not yet final and exact details are still being negotiated.  Dean Cohen told members he would e-mail the results once he has them available.

Dean Cohen began by saying that the current proposed plan is to provide two changes to health insurance for the 2001–2002 academic year.  These two changes are logically connected.  The first change is to require all graduate and professional students who are in residence in Ithaca to purchase Cornell student health insurance.  A driving force behind this proposed modification were the results of an audit on those students who have been waiving the health insurance plan.  The audit produced the following results:

� Among international students, of the 272 waivers received, 41% could not be verified. � Of the 159 that were successfully audited, 12% had no insurance coverage and 74% had insurance that did not meet Cornell’s requirements. � 15% of graduate students had no health insurance. � 14% of professional students had no health insurance. 24% of the remaining had insurance that did not meet Cornell’s requirements. Also 20% had insurance that could not be verified.

Dean Cohen stated that it is difficult to accurately analyze what this all means from the audit numbers, but it appears evident that far too many graduate and professional students either have no insurance or are underinsured.  He noted that it is not good for students to have no insurance because they are less likely to seek medical attention when they need it.  In addition, this damages Cornell’s relationship with the local medical community, which absorb the costs of those students who cannot pay their bills.  Finally, it exposes Cornell to severe legal liability.  Dean Cohen stated that at other schools, students who were uninsured and became sick or injured have then sued their schools and won, even though insurance was a mandatory requirement.  Therefore, this situation is not acceptable to the administration.  Dean Cohen noted that on the other hand, approximately two-thirds of graduate and professional students do buy student health insurance.

Dean Cohen stated that the second change to be instituted is that the University will pay health insurance premiums for students who receive full tuition and stipends directly from or through Cornell.  “From Cornell” means that a student has an assistantship or a University fellowship.  “Through Cornell” means that a student is NSF or some other external fellowship.  While many of the external fellowships do not cover everything, the University usually picks up the remainder and this would count as full coverage.  Approximately 3000 students are expected to be covered under this plan.  It is anticipated that health insurance will cost roughly $950 per student in 2001 and 2002.  Therefore, the gross amount will be $3 million.  The net amount is $2.6 million.  The other $400,000 will come from the University raising stipends by only 2% instead of by 4% in 2001–2002.  Thus, there is a real benefit to students from this plan.  Dean Cohen noted that there is an additional benefit to this.  When health insurance is a mandatory fee, if Cornell pays that fee for students, then students are receiving the benefit in pre-tax dollars.  In other words, it will not be part of students’ tax burden.  Therefore, when health insurance is added, students will receive a net increase of 10% instead of just 4%.  However, the University leaves open the option of raising stipends less than 4% in subsequent years.

Dean Cohen confirmed there would be some students who would have to pay more for health insurance.  He noted that many of the students in this group currently do not have adequate coverage and therefore he is not sympathetic to their rates going up.  He stressed it is very important to have adequate health care coverage.  There is a smaller group of people who do have good health insurance; usually through a spouse or employer.  There is room for resentment regarding the proposed changes from this group of people.  It was noted that situations like this have been examined.  For example, what if your spouse has Cornell employee health insurance?  There is only anecdotal information on this, but it appears that student insurance has usually been selected over the employee insurance in such situations.  Therefore, this does not seem to a widespread issue.  However, if it does appear to be a genuine hardship, this will be examined on a case-by-case basis although there will be no formal waiver process.

Members noted that some younger graduate students could still receive health insurance through their parents.  They suggested it would be a good idea to implement a formal waiver process.

Dean Cohen replied there would be no formal waiver process because there is no satisfactory way of verifying the information.

In response to members’ questions, Dean Cohen clarified that all full-time graduate and professional students in residence in Ithaca will be required to buy health insurance in the 2001–2002 academic year.

Members remarked that it appears that all students are being punished because some students are not following the rules.  A lot of people are losing a lot of flexibility under this proposed plan.  They inquired if it was possible to improve the waiver system so that audits can be run.

Dean Cohen replied that it is not possible to audit international waivers.  It is possible to evaluate waivers in the United States but would be extremely expensive to administer.  It is true that some people who do have good health insurance will have their options limited, but there do not seem to be any good alternatives to the current plan.

Members noted that students are required to provide evidence of health insurance on their waivers.  It was asked why it is hard to validate this evidence.

Dean Cohen replied that one thing that many graduate students do is that they buy the first month of health insurance and then they cancel it.  This has been extremely widespread.  It is simply not feasible for Cornell to audit each month.  There are also cheap health insurance plans that are fairly hard to verify.

Members asked if it was possible to keep additional coverage from whatever source.

Dean Cohen stated that students can have as much coverage as they want.  This proposal merely establishes minimum standards in an enforceable way.

Members asked if it is absolutely necessary to include professional students in this plan since it seems there will be no benefit to them.

Dean Cohen said that while there is no benefit to professional students, it appears that 35–55% of professional students do not have adequate health insurance.  This is unacceptable because the risk is much higher than the University is willing to assume.

Members asked for the eligibility requirements to be clarified.

Dean Cohen replied that Masters students who are fully-funded would receive health insurance.  He noted that there are a number of other schools who only cover Ph.D. students.  However, the plan will be more of a benefit to Ph.D. students than Masters students.  Approximately 90% of Ph.D. students will qualify for coverage, while only 20–25% of Masters students will be covered.  There may be a few professional students who will be covered.

Dean Cohen stated that this plan will be evaluated tomorrow and that he will report back to the GPSA.  He encouraged members to discuss this issue.  He stated that he would take the comments from this meeting back to the meeting tomorrow.  He noted there appears to be two main concerns:

1) professional students have a cost but no benefit 2) what about students who do have good alternate insurance Dean Cohen asked if there are any additional issues.

Members noted that there is a large portion of the graduate and professional student population who will not be covered by the proposed plan.  Concern was expressed over this point.

Dean Cohen stated that it is not likely that the University will cover these people.  Of this group, the only ones with a legitimate concern are those who have adequate health insurance.  He noted that the health insurance plan is an aggregate benefit, not an individual one.  Therefore, there is no way to ensure that no one will be hurt by this initiative.  This problem arises because there is no efficient way to evaluate waivers.

Members suggested that the waiver process be waived.  For example, audits could be conducted quarterly or monthly.  The burden of proof for a waiver could be placed on the student asking for it.  Also, waivers could have a fee attached to them.

In response, Dean Cohen stated that if health insurance is not set up as a mandatory fee it cannot be charged to grants.  If it cannot be charged to grants, the administration can either not provide health insurance to students on grants or pick up the additional cost, which will be about $800,000 a year. Also, allocation of costs and turnover have been influential in making this a mandatory fee. To address the first issue, Dean Cohen stated that he would discuss with Gannett Health Center if there is any way to exempt students on the basis of burden of proof.  He reiterated that the second issue still has to be addressed.

Some members stated that Gannett does not serve the needs of the graduate student population because it mainly is geared towards serving undergraduates.  It appears that some students discontinued their student health insurance because they did not want to be required to go to Gannett.  Other members disagreed, stating that the service at Gannett has been very good and that they have experienced no problems.

Members asked how Cornell’s plan compares to those at other universities?

Dean Cohen replied that there has been a significant trend towards universities including health insurance coverage.  He has been unable to discover any university in the country that provides health insurance to graduate and professional students who are not funded.  A majority of Cornell’s peers do provide health insurance for at least doctoral students, but coverage of master’s students is uneven.  He added that he knows of only two universities that provide better coverage than the plan proposed for Cornell.  For example, Michigan provides family coverage because they put students into the employee benefit pool and therefore students are eligible for family coverage at a reasonable rate.  Yale will provide 50% towards family coverage starting next year and this is probably as a result of the labor unrest at that school.  Most schools are in the same class of coverage as Cornell.  In terms of the quality of the coverage, it appears that Cornell’s plan is better than most schools’.  This plan would place Cornell at the upper group but not at the top.

Members asked about what the process would be for the future.

Dean Cohen stated that budgetary approval would be asked for at tomorrow’s meeting.  If budgetary approval is denied, then it is over.  If it is approved, feedback will be sought from several groups, such as students and faculty.  After that, it will go back to the Provost to consider additional modifications.

Members asked if it would be possible to attend the meetings where the actual decisions are made?

Dean Cohen replied that students would not be able to attend those meetings.  There will be some meetings set aside for graduate students to provide input, but the actual decisions will be made behind closed doors.  However, the opinion of the community does have merit and will be shared with the other administrators.  It would carry weight if students, the targeted beneficiaries of the plan, stated a majority opposed the proposal.  On the other hand, if students voted that they did not want to be bound by the standards of Gannett Health Center, the administration would most likely give less weight to that concern because minimum standards are needed.

Members requested that Dean Cohen keep the GPSA updated on this issue.  It was also asked if a meeting or a forum would be possible to present the petitions that were gathered by the GPSA.

Dean Cohen stated that he is willing to schedule an open forum or a meeting with a smaller group.

Members remarked that the petitions were signed without people knowing about the first part of the proposed plan.

It was asked that Dean Cohen clarify the source of funds.

Dean Cohen replied that two-thirds or more of the money will come from University resources and a minority will come from grants.

S.Hames stated that if budgetary approval is gained, then it would be possible to vote on the presented plan at the next GPSA meeting.  However, if people have issues with the plan, then it should be promulgated as widely as possible and then take a vote.

Dean Cohen stressed that he will report back all the comments that members have made.  However, he is not optimistic about the administration’s ability to improve upon the current proposal.  He noted that all of the issues have been discussed before, with the exception of the one about Gannett not being suited to graduate students’ needs.  In addition, the document is not endlessly amendable because all of the pieces do fit together.

P.Carr clarified that the selection of Gannett as the primary care giver is not the result of this proposed financial plan.  Instead, this is the result of the choice of the insurance plans that Cornell goes with.  He asked members to hand in their petitions to the GPSA so that they may be given to Dean Cohen.  P.Carr thanked Dean Cohen for attending the meeting and answering members’ questions.

Members asked what could be done if the proposal did not receive budgetary approval.

P.Carr replied that the GPSA could then issue a condemning resolution.  He reminded members that Dean Cohen has been a strong ally of graduate students on this issue.

S.Hames reminded members that the GPSA would know tomorrow whether budgetary approval has been received.  If the proposal did not receive approval, then a discussion could be started on gpsa-l on what should be done.

Members requested that a summary of the plan be sent out to gpsa-l so that the plan could be distributed to constituents.

Open Forum

Krysta Levac, Nutrition, asked if the term “year” in the health insurance petition refers to the regular year or the academic year?

P.Carr replied that students would be covered for both so long as they fulfill the other requirements.

K.Levac stated that one of her constituents brought up the issue of Social Security benefits.  Evidently, the constituent heard from the University that money is not withheld because that is against the law.  However, the constituent called the Social Security Administration to confirm and received conflicting information.  K.Levac asked members if they knew anything more about this topic.

P.Carr replied that the University does not withhold money for TAs and RAs because of graduate students’ dual student/employee roles.  P.Carr noted that he believes that it is possible to voluntarily choose to pay the tax.

Jean Ahn, Human Services, stated that she needs volunteers for focus groups about the student health insurance website.  She stated that she would send out an e-mail to gpsa-l with more information.

Announcements and Reports A) GPSA

This item was bypassed due to lack of time.

B) Ivy Grad Council

P.Carr stated that he and S.Hames recently attended the Ivy Grad Council Conference that was hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.  He felt that the meeting was interesting because they learned quite a bit about the other schools.  For example, the Penn organization seems to have an abundance of money, while the students’ associations at Columbia and Brown do not have budgets. At many schools, such as Yale, there appears to be a schism between graduate students and professional students.  P.Carr affirmed that Cornell seems to be doing better than many of its peers when it comes to budget and cohesion issues.

S.Hames commented that it appeared many of the other organizations were primarily social in nature.  He noted that Penn currently does not provide health insurance for its graduate students and so the organization decided to call a meeting together.  S.Hames stated that Penn would like to have all the Ivies along with Berkeley, Chicago, and Stanford work together on this issue.

C) West Campus Program Planning

P.Carr stated that copies of the West Campus Program Planning committee’s report have been brought to the meeting.  He requested that members read the document.

S.Hames stated that input from graduate students has been requested and it would be helpful if members could send P.Carr any comments that they might have in an e-mail message to him at pmc1@cornell.edu with “West Campus” in the subject header.

D) UA

K.Levac reported that the UA is currently reviewing program documents.  It reviewed and approved the program document for Cornell United Religious Works at its last meeting.  She stated that the program documents for Transportation, the Campus Store, and Gannett Health Center will be on the agenda for the next UA meeting.  K.Levac said that the UA has decided to require that these departments hold public forums about their program documents in the future.  This will help ensure that community feedback occurs before these program documents are presented to the UA for their approval.

Business of the Day A) Monthly Payout of Fellowship Stipend

P.Carr referred members to the handout on this subject that was distributed earlier.  He stated that under this plan it might be possible to be paid by direct deposit.

S.Hames requested that members get feedback from their constituents.  He noted that the comments that he has received thus far have been very mixed and more comments would be appreciated.  He noted that this proposal would not pass without the GPSA’s approval.  S.Hames stated that he would send an e-mail on this subject to gpsa-l.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned by P.Carr at 6:05 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted, Stephanie Tinsley, student clerk