Brianna Ries doesn’t want to get sick.
It’s not that she dreads missing classes or parties — it’s that she doesn’t want to pay.
Doctor bills and the accompanying pharmacy charges are more than a wallet-emptier for students who, like freshman Ries, do not have health insurance.
“It’s the type of thing that you don’t think about having it until you need it,” Ries says.
She’s not sure why her insurance plan ended when she turned 18. Ries and her mother had a Qualchoice plan, but they both stopped receiving health insurance coverage when Ries became a legal adult. She later found out that she should have been covered for an additional year. Unfortunately she was already 19 when the insurance company informed her.
“I come from a really poor family, the welfare-type home where everything is provided, and I don’t know how to get health insurance for myself,” Ries says. “It’s strange trying to figure it out.”
Ries is not alone: Fifteen percent of the nation, according to the 2003 U.S. Census Bureau report, don’t have health insurance. And about 20 percent of Kent State students are in the same boat, according to an American College Health Association poll taken the same year.
For the Kent State students who do not have health insurance, going to the doctor is frightening. Stephanie Welch, a 21-year-old junior classics major, lost insurance coverage from her parents’ plan when she got married this past November.
“I haven’t gone to the doctors yet. I am kind of afraid,” she says. “People have been getting sick around me in the dorms, but I've been lucky so far. I personally don't have a doctor, so I would probably go to the health center first. But if I were really sick, I would go to the hospital and worry about it later. My life is more important than money.”
“I come from a really poor family, the welfare-type home where everything is provided, and I don’t know how to get health insurance for myself.”
Just how much money are we talking about for one emergency room visit?
Welch’s husband, 20-year-old Eric Reed, a former aeronautics student, who attends an aeronautics school in Pittsburgh, spent about four hours in the hospital for a viral infection and came out with a $600 bill.
Paying this hospital bill was rough for them, Welch says. They had to use student loan money, which was for books and other college necessities, to keep the creditors from calling them.
Dropping below full-time status or leaving a university can cause students to lose insurance benefits.
When Michelle Radosevich, a 21-year-old former Ohio University student, left school last November, she was no longer covered under her parents’ plan. She says she never went to the doctor much but would like to go to the dentist and have other check-ups. She says she has been sick but won’t go to the doctors because she can’t afford it.
Radosevich broke her toe, but she wouldn’t go to the emergency room because she it might cost her thousands of dollars. “There isn’t much that can be done for a broken toe,” Radosevich says. “But if it was something else, or I really needed medical attention, I couldn’t go.”
Visiting the pharmacy also can get very costly, especially if you’re prescribed drugs that do not have generic alternatives.
“I have allergies, and I break out in hives if I don’t take medication. I was on Zyrtec for that, and I found out I wasn’t covered anymore when I went to fill the prescription,” Ries says. “Now I have to pay for my birth control, Claritin and Prozac, but I get most of them at Kent State’s health center’s pharmacy. They bill my Bursar’s account, and I use loans to pay it off.”
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.