Health plans merit discussion

For the past few years, a duck has been professionally enlisted to sell a service that is quickly becoming one of the most debatable issues in American domestic policy. The Aflac commercials have become so commonplace that they have managed to monopolize the advertising capabilities of an entire species of animals. Who really thought monopolizing a white duck would be so valuable?

The product the duck is selling also happens to be a major domestic issue that is all too often cast aside in everyday conversation for more chic topics such as immigration reform and gun control.

Insurance is something that I rarely think about as an invincible and immortal college student, but I'm sure that invincibility is a beneficial and temporary symptom of still being listed on my parents' plan.

Those of you who currently are, or ever have, lived in a dorm, have most likely seen an ambulance pull up to one of the entrances, or at least heard about the notorious incident in which so-and-so drank too much and had to go to the hospital, or so-and-so passed out in their room and had to head to the emergency room.

The part of the story that you probably didn't hear was when the bill came, and that ambulance ride became a $600 joy ride. Or when the three-hour stint in a hospital bed transformed into a couple thousand dollars, plus the cost of medications. For an uninsured student or young adult, that could be tuition or months of rentgone.

Supported graduate students at Tech are required to have proof of insurance to enroll, but, when I enrolled last year there was no corresponding rule for undergraduates (although this is something that has been considered recently).

As an institution, it is not Tech's place to dictate how the students here must invest their money. However, they should encourage students to have health insurance and make an effort to better educate the undergraduate populace.

Choosing a plan, leaving a parent's plan, and making sure you have adequate coverage are complicated decisions, but unlike the other mature life choices we are faced with, finding insurance is a topic that is rarely to never discussed on campus.

I've used the Student Health Center multiple times and have never once seen any information on health insurance outside of the forms asking for mine in exchange for certain medications.

Fortunately, as I said before, I am still happily on my parents' insurance plan and was able to fill out the blanks on the form about insurance. Not everyone can, though. Tech is not the only institution that has inconsistent policies on health insurance, nor the only organization where there are members running the risk of major losses should they have any sudden medical expenses.

For example, if one considers the United States of America an institution or organization, the following fact is somewhat alarming: almost 16 percent of American citizens are uninsured-that's over 46 million people.

If that number didn't floor you, consider the fact that the population of the state of Georgia is expected to reach slightly short of nine million people by 2010. As we are all Tech students, I will assume you have done the math on that.

Medical insurance is quickly evolving out of the political sphere of the AARP crowd. Government insurance policy is not limited to just Medicare and Medicaid, although the two are complicated enough to take an entire bureaucracy to sort them out. Programs like Peach Care for Kids, a state program designed to provide free or low-cost healthcare to low-income children and state employees, also constitute a large portion of health care aid programs.

Government sponsored insurance is just a stalling mechanism for many of its beneficiaries.

Programs like these might provide a necessary service, preventing families from sinking into debt, and helping make sure that the medical industry gets paid in a more timely manner than a bankruptcy attorney can provide, but in the long run, they are not helping people obtain insurance. They are insuring people for free for a limited period of time-two largely different things.

Insurance is a commodity that has to be paid for by someone. Eventually the children who are covered by state and federal funding will outgrow the programs, and will simply join the already daunting 40-plus million people who live with their fingers crossed that they remain healthy.

The system needs an overhaul. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 70 million Americans live with heart disease, but open-heart surgery can cost over $60,000, a price that is unfathomably steep for the uninsured.

As long as it is not required that Americans obtain insurance, huge portions of the population will remain without it. Unfortunately it is the responsibility of the government to stress the importance of medical insurance and encourage people to obtain it and to provide incentives for companies to offer it.

It's time for health insurance to become a topic for discussion somewhere other than elections, instead of allowing it to become a much larger problem without a word ever being spoken.