Editor:

I have to respond to a letter published in the Wildcat on April 2 by Laura DeMuro ("Foreigners' insurance benefits students") regarding the Student Health insurance and clarify some issues. The recent discussion of the UA forcing international students to purchase the PARTNERS Health insurance is not a discussion about the quality of this insurance. Every student, not just international students, should have this or a similar health insurance.

The point is that international students who already have a health insurance coverage of equal or superior quality are also forced to purchase the Campus Health insurance provide by PARTNERS. In my case, this leaves me with three options: paying for two health insurances, giving up a health insurance with 100 percent coverage (including dental and eye care), or leaving the UA.

Laura DeMuro shouldn't claim that foreign students only benefit from the health insurance. The only benefit from the insurance forced on me is that I must pay $606 more per year to the UA. Furthermore, it is not true that this "has been an institutional regulation for decades." When I came to the UA in 1992, my home country health insurance was accepted, and I didn't have to purchase the Campus Health insurance.

It was possible to control health insurance coverage before; why not now and in the future?

I'm willing to prove that I'm enrolled in an acceptable health insurance at any time the UA might request it. To avoid problems with students canceling their health insurance after proof of insurance coverage to the UA, I suggest that the UA could make every international student sign a statement saying that the student will be held responsible for any medical costs, whether or not the student is covered by health insurance.

To conclude, I will use some simple math to illustrate a possible reason why the UA forces Campus Health insurance on international students. According to an article on the title page of the Wildcat on March 5, 5,600 students were enrolled in the PARTNERS plan in fall 1994. About one third of them were nonsponsored international students. So, we have 1,828 international students times $606 a year equals approximately $1.1 million. This doesn't include any possible additional costs for family members, copayment, medicine, vaccine, etc...

Ralf Birken
geological and geophysical engineering Ph.D. candidate