by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
The Student Health Center will try to get a higher cap and more support for contraception under the student health insurance plan.
Employees of the center met Tuesday to discuss negotiations with provider Macori Inc. for student health insurance.
"We can ask for anything we want," said Beverly Kloeppel, director of the center. "It just ends up being a matter of judgment of cost. We have the ability to negotiate. Our issue is to push them as far as they can be pushed."
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Eleven people, including one student, attended the meeting.
Kloeppel said she wants more students to attend the meetings.
About 3,000 students are on UNM's health insurance.
"We need some students to help us make the decisions we'll be making," she said. "We need that perspective. This is about them."
The next meeting is March 22.
About 13 percent of UNM students are not on health insurance, Kloeppel said.
The meeting attendees agreed to ask the insurance company about providing birth control at lower costs. They will also ask the company to allow the center to provide three months of birth control at a time instead of one month.
The center might get lower premiums by encouraging students to use cheaper generic medication, Kloeppel said.
One of the insurance plans does not cover contraception but covers abortions.
The policy has a maximum annual payout of $30,000.
Kloeppel said she would like it to be increased to $50,000.
Before UNM switched providers last year, the maximum was $20,000.
"A cap of $20,000 gives the illusion of insurance, but one major event can go well over that," Kloeppel said.
Increasing the cap to $50,000 would mean a 9.3 percent increase in premiums. If the cap stays where it is, there will be a 5.1 percent increase in premiums.
The insurance company has offered a 2.5 percent reduction in premiums if the plan includes a $150 charge for emergency room visits.
"It's supposed to be a disincentive for students to use the emergency room when they don't need it," Kloeppel said. "Given what you have to go through to use an emergency room in this state, I don't think that's really necessary. The four- to six-hour wait is probably enough."
Kloeppel said the center tries to prevent unnecessary trips to the emergency room.
"We don't want to send students if they're going to be sent out with something we could have taken care of," she said.
The company also offered a 2 percent reduction if UNM limited the amount the company spent on prescriptions to $1,000 per person per year instead of $1,500.
"I'm not crazy about either of these proposals," Kloeppel said. "It think it adds a lot of burden to people who don't have a lot of control over these things. If we could get rewarded for every person who quits smoking or something, that would be a different story."
