Health insurance for graduate students with dependents to increase
“MIT Medical has decided to disproportionately increase the insurance costs for families over concerns that healthy people are paying for sick people,” Westgate president says.
“MIT Medical insurance rates for grad students with spouses and dependents are set to increase by 9.4% next year, 5% higher than the increase for students,” according to a statement by Eastgate President, Eric Kilpatrick G, Graduate Student Council Families Representative Ankur Chavda G, and GSC member Huma Gupta G, along with Naomi Carton, associate dean of residential life and dining.
“The current plan is to continue this rate of increase for at least the next three years.”
The statement was shared with Westgate residents in an email sent by Westgate Executive Committee presidents Paloma Gonzalez Rojas G and Diego Brugnoli.
“MIT Medical has decided to disproportionately increase the insurance costs for families over concerns that healthy people are paying for sick people,” Rojas wrote.
“They’ve identified that young, single students tend to cost less than spouses that often have pregnancies or children that sometimes have complications which require expensive medical care to survive,” Rojas added.
MIT Medical officials held a meeting May 8 for Westgate residents to voice their concerns.
Rojas urged Westgate residents in an email to attend the meeting and ask about issues such as why MIT students aren’t able to acquire federal subsidies on the MIT health plan, why “faculty and staff have much lower health insurance costs than grad students,” and why MIT isn’t “using its profits from drug patents to offset the high cost of drugs in our health care plan.”
The “administrators who support these cost increases for families,” according to Rojas, are Cecilia Warpinski Stuopis, director of MIT Medical, Suzy Nelson, vice president of student life, and Cindy Barnhart, chancellor.
The reasoning for the price increase, said the WEC presidents, results from “concerns that healthy people are paying for sick people.”