On June 16, 2007, my fiancé, James, was in a car accident in Freeport, Ill., on his way home from visiting a friend. He had a torn aorta, ruptured diaphragm, three fractures in his pelvis, three cracked ribs and his stomach was in his chest.. James had emergency surgery to repair his aorta and diaphragm, had a tube put down his throat to help him breathe, spent four weeks in the Intensive Care Unit, had a tracheotomy to replace the breathing tube and spent another three weeks in physical rehabilitation. The surgery to put a graft on his aorta alone cost more than $18,000. His stay in the ICU cost over $300,000, and the total bill came to over $500,000.
Fortunately, James had two forms of medical insurance: his father's insurance through work and his own through the University of Illinois. The university insurance covered about half the cost and his father's covered the rest. Can you imagine his family's financial ruin had he not had insurance?
No one knows what will happen tomorrow. No one knows if a cold will turn into a serious infection or pneumonia. No one knows if that sprained ankle is broken. No one knows whether a drive home will end in a summer-long hospital stay. No one can ever predict whether they will need hospitalization or medical care. That's why AU (along with many other universities) requires students to have medical insurance. It is infinitely more costly to be without it when you need it than to pay for premiums outright. Even generic prescription drugs are prohibitively costly without medical coverage - one month's supply of an antibiotic can cost well over $100.
I don't know about the average reader of The Eagle, but I certainly can't afford to pay that, let alone a similar price for all my monthly mediations. The difference, though, is that the University of Ill. charges its undergraduate students only $180 a semester for medical insurance, as opposed to AU's $1,325. That's seven times the amount that the Univeristy of Ill. charges. Clearly, medical insurance is necessary in this day and age, but AU's coverage is nearly unaffordable for most students and is dauntingly expensive for others. The problem is not the requirement to have insurance, but the cost of that which is provided. So yes, Mr. Deutsch, I can show you that it is "so important for every student to have health insurance that some should pay serious late fees and even risk eviction and/or deregistration as a result." Because there are greater financial burdens than rent and tuition.
Rachel Karp Freshman, School of International Service
