GC Students Rally for Better Health Care
by Advocate Staff
Protesters at the March 18 rally about the health care crisis. Photo by Lisa Quiñones.
We’ve all heard the stories: the CUNY graduate student who, upon realizing she had probably severed a nerve in her finger, still contemplated whether or not to go the emergency room; the CUNY graduate student who, with a broken shoulder, gave the hospital a fake name so as to avoid the exorbitant costs of an X-ray; or even worse, the CUNY graduate student who actually had to give up his fellowship in order to qualify for state funded Medicaid care because he simply had no other options. These stories, all true, reveal the desperate need for adequate and affordable health care for CUNY graduate students. Although the Graduate Center offers a number of different health care plans, students and administration alike have begun to realize that the current health insurance options provided for Graduate Center students, including GHI and the PSC Welfare Fund, are woefully inadequate, and even worse, are often distributed unequally among students.
Although health insurance has been a perennial concern of both students and the administration at CUNY; GC students, the Doctoral Students’ Council, the Adjunct Project, and The Professional Staff Congress have all recently stepped up their calls for affordable health insurance, organizing a vigorous campaign of action that has included meetings with CUNY officials and petitions, letters, and phone calls to local and state politicians, all of which culminated in a large demonstration on March 18 in front of the Graduate Center. This demonstration, organized by the Adjunct Project and the PSC, was held to coincide with a visit to the GC from Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. Estimates from the Adjunct Project suggest that there were between forty and fifty protestors at the March 18 rally.
Although the GC had already been investigating potential solutions to the GC health care crisis, these efforts have successfully stepped up the pressure on the chancellor’s office, helping to bring the struggle for decent and affordable health care directly to Albany, where many students and administrators hope to find the funding for improved health care options at CUNY.
Part of the impetus for and one of the most interesting aspects of this continuing struggle is the recent realization that The State University of New York (SUNY) provides all of their teaching graduate students with access to the New York State Health Insurance Program, or NYSHIP. This program, which is partly subsidized by SUNY, offers full medical and prescription coverage with low co-pays, as well as dental and vision benefits. All SUNY graduate students who work or teach for the university are eligible for this plan, including teaching assistants and fellows who, at CUNY, are currently ineligible for the union sponsored health insurance offered through the PSC Welfare Fund.
This inequity between SUNY and CUNY has outraged students such as Ellen Zitani and Sean Murray, who argue that CUNY graduate students should be receiving no less than the same health insurance that is provided to SUNY graduate students. “SUNY’s graduate student workers have had access to subsidized health insurance since the early 1990s,” said Sean Murray.
According to Ellen Zitani, the Graduate Student Administrator for the CUNY Graduate Center Office of Student Affairs, the total annual cost of NYSHIP insurance for eligible SUNY graduate students is $114.96 while the total cost for family coverage is only $996.72 per year. This cost, says Zitani, is significantly lower than the current options available to many CUNY graduate students and teaching fellows who qualify for the GHI plan offered by CUNY. The GHI plan, according to Zitani, costs individuals $2,396.76 annually, while family coverage is a shocking $6,830.88 per year. “This disparity is outrageous,” said Zitani, adding that the “options available to CUNY graduate students (many of whom are employees of the state of New York through the CUNY system) are inadequate and generally unaffordable.”
Responding, in part to this increasing pressure from students, the Graduate Center administration – including President Bill Kelly and the Office of student Affairs – along with CUNY Chancellor Goldstein, have begun urging the New York state legislature to earmark funds for the creation of a CUNY Health Insurance program comparable to what is offered at SUNY. Although, according to President Kelly, the Chancellor’s office had already requested funds for GC Graduate student health insurance in its November budget request, any actual request for a SUNY-style plan did not come until March. In a letter dated March 13, 2008 to the Chairs of the state Committee on Higher Education, Senator Kenneth LaValle and Assemblyperson Deborah Glick, Chancellor Goldstein and President Kelly requested funds for CUNY graduate student health insurance, and laid out the estimated cost of a SUNY style program at CUNY.
CUNY doctoral student participation in SEPH or a comparable plan would cost New York State approximately $2.6 million (2,300 students at $1,125 each, using the 2007 cost of SEPH at SUNY Stony Brook). Funding should come from an appropriate state source outside of CUNY’s operating budget.
However, although Kelly is optimistic about these attempts to acquire health insurance in the long run, he has been less than optimistic about the actual chances that any of this will come to fruition shortly. In a recent letter to the GC community Kelly argued that timelines would be disingenuous, suggesting that any health insurance initiatives would be subject to availability of state funds. Said Kelly, “I am convinced that we are moving in the right direction and that we will ultimately reach our goal, but the current fiscal circumstances of the state, and by extension those of the university, are such that time-lines are disingenuous.”
Similarly, Assemblyperson Glick has publicly said she supports finding some kind of solution to the health insurance problem for CUNY students, but her office has been less than enthusiastic about the possibility of providing parity anytime soon. Speaking to The GC Advocate, Glick made it clear that there would likely be no movement on the issue during this year’s budget debate, saying “It’s obviously a very difficult year with deteriorating economic circumstances. Considering what we’re facing with the new governor’s recent declarations [about 3.35% cuts to SUNY and CUNY] we will be scrambling to maintain basic support.”
Glick also said that “we certainly would like to see parity but it’s a financial issue that may in part be associated with collective bargaining,” suggesting that any graduate student health insurance gains may be put on hold until they can be negotiated by the Professional Staff Congress.
State Senator Liz Kreuger’s office was also pessimistic about the prospects of getting anything done this budget round. Travis Proulx of Senator Krueger’s office said that “she does support equal health care access,” but added that “as far as getting it into this year’s budget no promises can be made, but people will try.”
More enthusiastic about providing parity is Republican state Senator Serphin Maltese of Queens, who is calling on LaValle and Glick to provide money in the budget for CUNY health care now. Vicky Vattimo, Maltese’s chief of staff told The GC Advocate that “the senator totally supports providing health insurance parity to CUNY students and has asked that it be put in the 2009 budget.” Vattimo added that “the senator has indicated that if it is cut he will try to get it done legislatively.”
Although most of the recent discussions about GC student health insurance, both at CUNY and in Albany, have focused on providing parity with SUNY by providing care for working graduate students, some have argued that the proposed plan is still not adequate. Because the university’s proposed plan would cover only graduate students who work for the state, some are arguing that this system would only perpetuate and duplicate many of the inequities that already exist between those graduate students at the GC who are covered by the Welfare Fund and those who do not teach or who have fellowships and therefore are not eligible for the PSC sponsored health insurance program. Carl Lindskoog, who leads the DSC’s Adjunct Project, said that he was delighted about the Chancellor’s and the President’s calls for a health insurance system for doctoral students at CUNY, but added that,
“We are concerned that Chancellor Goldstein and President Kelly are only calling for health insurance for doctoral students and only those that are employed by CUNY. What about master’s and doctoral students that are not working at CUNY? We need a health insurance system for all CUNY graduate students, not just doctoral students who are employed as graduate or teaching assistants.”
