Ourview
Health
fees should be optional
Senior
film major Luis Melin parks his car every
evening in Lot C, walks by University Drive
and past the Student Health Center. Yet in
his three years as a student of Cal State
Long Beach, Luis has never set foot inside
the Health Center. Why? He doesn’t need the
services. His job affords a good health insurance
program with the doctor of his choice.
One of the many services available to Forty-Niners
is the access to the Health Services. The
Student Health Center offers a variety of
services including announcements, workshops,
immunizations, physicals, and TB and STD testing.
These services are almost free of charge.
While many of us are fortunate to have the
opportunity to use some of these services
on occasions, there are many students who
have never used any of them who also pay.
Every semester students pay a mandatory health
fee which is currently $35, and if they decide
to attend summer or winter courses, the fee
is an additional $15 during the shorter sessions.
The problem is that many of the students have
no use for the health services on campus.
Some students for example, are able to continue
under their parents or guardians health insurance,
and other working students have their own
health insurance, while some students would
rather pay on a per-visit basis to use a practitioner
of their choice, and some others rarely become
ill. Whatever the reason, many feel they should
not have to pay for services they do not use.
If we look at it as only $35 per student,
we may think it is not a big deal. However,
if we look at the cost in terms of the whole
we notice a substantial difference. The spring
2003 semester, enrollment at CSULB alone,
were 32,923 students. The amount paid in health
fees thus came to $1,152,305. When we consider
the rising cost of tuition that may go up
to 25 percent within the next couple of semesters,
the cost becomes even more substantial.
There is no denying that the services provided
by the Health Center are diverse and affordable.
However, as Melin states, “Why should I pay
for it when I don’t use it? The problem I
have with it is choice, the fact that it is
mandatory. I think the health fee should be
like parking: Optional.”
While Cal State Long Beach has a low-cost
health fee, and the board of trustees subsidizes
25 percent the health service funding, making
the fee mandatory for all students can be
unfair to those who do not use the services
and costly to those who have their own provider.
It is understandable that students who live
on-campus to pay for the mandatory fees, due
to liability and emergency issues. And it
is understandable for people like myself who
use the services to pay for them. But why
should an institution force its students to
pay for an unnecessary or unrequited service.
At least those students, who pay for parking
and end up parking next to Atherton Street,
have the choice to not pay for parking.
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