Originally published on May 16

Jenny Shemwell was starting to worry. It was December 2006, four months after her husband, Jon, began his graduate studies at Stanford, and Shemwell had not secured health coverage for herself or for her young daughter Grace. With cold and flu season underway, Shemwell considered locating health insurance a top priority for her family but found the task daunting.

A year earlier, Shemwell would have had no trouble finding health coverage for herself and Grace - they could have simply opted to join Stanford's Dependent Health Care Plan. But with the program's cancellation in September 2006, finding health insurance transformed from a simple process into an ordeal that took nearly half a year for the Shemwells and a few other graduate student families.

For some of those affected, Stanford's decision to cancel the plan raises questions about whether the University has an obligation to ensure that everyone living within its extended community has access to health coverage.

"The University wants us all to have insurance but they don't feel like it's feasible or affordable to help us," Shemwell said. "So it's nothing."

In a system of increasingly expensive and complex health coverage options, Stanford maintains that as an employer and institution of higher learning, it is committed to providing students with means and benefits sufficient for the care and maintenance of their families.

"We understand the pressures and difficulties that students have in this area," Vaden Health Center Associate Director Amy Baldwin said in an email to The Daily. "Our staff in the Insurance Office is deeply concerned and cares a great deal about this issue."

Trumped by the high price of health care and a renewed determination to cut costs, the University's commitment has fallen short for as many as 100 families.

One Ph.D. student in the social sciences, who was granted anonymity due to the stigma attached to chronic health conditions, reported medical bills totaling approximately $9,600 in out-of-pocket medical expenses since the Dependent Health Care Plan was cancelled. Both her husband, who is also a student, and her son have severe chronic health problems.

"It looks to me that Stanford is reducing its responsibilities for student health care," she said. "It gets more expensive every year."

Although costs were high under the Dependent Health Care Plan, she said, the switch to outside health insurance carriers was worse.

"[The plan] was definitely better than having insurance on the private market," she said. "It was better than dealing with a company that had no institutional relationship with me. If I disputed an insurance charge, having Vaden as an advocate was very helpful."

Education graduate student Matt Andrews, who formerly represented students with families on the Graduate Student Council (GSC), concurred.

"If you have kids or if you have a pregnant spouse, [private insurance] is pretty much not affordable," he said. "The other population that was hurt is people who move to Stanford. You talk to people who were three months without health insurance."

Stanford students and their dependents are offered access to both private and public health insurance providers. Emphasis is placed on "no-cost" programs like Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and Healthy Kids, which provide full preventative care insurance to children and have no deductible.

But Andrews said the lack of options outside of California's state plans might deter some from coming to Stanford.

"The biggest problem [with the state programs]," he said, "is that international students don't qualify."

Xuehua Zhang is a fifth-year graduate student from China who is studying in the School of Earth Sciences.

"It's really difficult to find out [about insurance]," she said. "The only way you find out is by networking with other Chinese students. You find out what the cheap options are."

"One candidate [prospective student] who was here was really concerned about insurance for three children," she added.

In the near future, Baldwin promised, Vaden will work with the GSC Health Care Task Force to try to fix some of the problems facing students trying to find health insurance for their families.

"We believe it is important for all students and their families to have adequate health insurance," she said.