Opting out costs UMSU and students thousands

Magally Zelaya, staff

The reimbursement of students who paid for UMSU’s student health and dental plan and opted out is costing UMSU and the 12,000 students still enrolled in the plan thousands of dollars in banking and cheque-printing fees.

Though the university required that UMSU adopt the new cheque model, the university remains responsible for only the collection and remittance of fees and will not be covering the cost of the cheques.

Both the university and UMSU said there was no debate of who would cover the cost, as the health and dental plan is an UMSU initiative. “It’s our responsibility,” said Garry Sran, UMSU president.

Initial projections estimated the cost of issuing the cheques to be in the vicinity of $11,000 (one dollar per cheque for the roughly 11,000 students who opted out). However, Sran said the cost might be less.

“We’ve been working with the bank to get it down closer to [the] $5,000 range.”

Sran said the money would be “budgeted through the health and dental plan administration fees” paid by the approximately 12,000 students who remain covered by the policy.

This is the first year all students who were enrolled in six credit hours in the fall semester had to pay the $226 fee even if they did not require coverage and were eligible to opt out of the plan.

It is also the first year, since the plan’s inception in 2001 that students who have opted out are receiving a reimbursement via cheques. Previously, if a reimbursement was required it would take the form of fee statement adjustment.

Last year’s implementation of the Aurora system created enough complications that both the university and UMSU were forced to consider another method of reimbursement.

“It was quite a mess, we had a tremendous amount of trouble giving UMSU and, in turn Green Shield, an accurate picture of who should be covered in that plan,” said the university’s registrar, Neil Marnoch.

The result was that many students received reimbursements when they had not paid for the plan to begin with. Others ended up paying the fees though they had opted out, and still others were not able to access the program’s coverage until February, though they had paid for coverage in September.

Marnoch said that the university looked at various universities to see how other institutions run similar health plans.

“We are now in the majority of the way universities run this plan; which is not to say that it’s the best way,” said Marnoch.

“We didn’t want a repeat of students showing up and not getting access to health care services when they needed it. So this was sort of the lesser of two evils.”

A $2.5-million advance has been given to UMSU by the university to cover the refund amount owed to students who opted out. The amount will be adjusted to reflect the actual figure if needed.

Sran said UMSU accepted the advance “to get cheques out in a timely fashion.”

Reimbursement cheques have been available for pick up since Oct.16, with student ID, at the UMSU Health and Dental plan office.