For someone looking for work during an unsettled economy, Matthew Janes \u201907 seems to be in a reasonably appealing position. Armed with a Stanford degree in symbolic systems and over a year of experience at Palo Alto tech company mSpot, Janes has the right credentials for a permanent programming job. He is even making some money during his job hunt by doing contract Web design work.<\/p>\n
But Janes and other work-seeking graduates overwhelmingly absorbed with finding post-college work are also dealing with another issue: the fact that they often lack standard health care coverage during the job search process.<\/p>\n
Stanford requires every enrolled student to have health insurance–an \u201cindividual mandate\u201d in health care parlance. If a student is not covered under an outside plan (usually his or her parents\u2019), the student must purchase Cardinal Care, the University-run health insurance plan, for a premium of $800 per quarter.<\/p>\n
This ensures that Stanford students have health coverage through their education. However, neither Cardinal Care nor nearly every parental health plan is available to Stanford alumni after their graduation.<\/p>\n
Many companies offer group health plans to their employees, but when a graduate wants to freelance or work at a start-up or a small company that does not offer insurance–or when work is scarce in a down economy–this makes the months and years after graduation perilous from a health insurance standpoint.<\/p>\n
The United States Census Bureau estimates that 15.4 percent of the population was without health insurance in 2008. Of those 46 million people, over half are between age 18 and 34. Young alumni are in the age group most likely to be uninsured.<\/p>\n
Most of those interviewed by The Daily try to solve the problem of insurance by purchasing high-deductible emergency health plans. Bryan Schell \u201907 gets a basic level of coverage from this type of plan as he works an unpaid internship at the United Nations Refugee Agency in Washington, D.C. He hopes the internship will open doors for future employment (and health coverage), but for the moment he can only afford a basic plan on his own.<\/p>\n
Under Schell\u2019s plan, the insurance company pays for expenses after the first $1,000, so it doesn\u2019t help with check-ups and prescriptions. In the event of a major accident, though, Schell would have help with the ensuing costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m young and I don\u2019t have any health problems, so it\u2019s ideal for me,\u201d said Schell, who is paying rent out of savings and small earnings from a part-time job.<\/p>\n
But underinsurance can be almost as big a problem as being uninsured. The Census does not project the number of underinsured people, but a post-college emergency plan, which may be the only option available to an alum seeking work, is sometimes just not enough coverage.<\/p>\n
Janes understands this better than most. While searching for an employer–and a health plan to replace Cardinal Care, the insurance he got as a dependent of his parents and mSpot\u2019s group health plan–he enrolled in a high-deductible plan. It is, according to him, for \u201ccar crashes and chainsaw accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan barely helps with prescription costs, a pressing matter for Janes because he has Type 1 diabetes. Insulin and testing strips cost him $200 to $300 per month now, compared to $25 to $50 when he was on Cardinal Care. He has started to skimp on testing strips, resulting in occasionally erratic blood sugar levels, and is now searching for employer-based health insurance as much as for a job now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had to cut back on a lot of medical care I\u2019d been getting,\u201d Janes said. \u201cA group health plan to me is worth over $1,000 a month on top of a salary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janes is watching the progression of health care reform in Congress with a particularly critical eye; among the provisions in the House and Senate bills that have both passed is one that allows children to remain on their parents\u2019 health plans through age 26, instead of getting kicked off during or after college. Janes, 25, would appreciate that more comprehensive coverage as he looks for employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would mean huge savings for me and much better medical care than I\u2019ve been getting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Through awareness of the recession and the congressional health care debate, Stanford students are becoming more conscious of the health insurance trouble their demographic group steps into after leaving the University. But the search for a job, even one that does not offer insurance, outweighs other considerations. In the minds of most Stanford students looking for something to do with their lives, it appears that the job comes first, and health care comes second…or not at all.<\/p>\n
Lance Choy, director of Stanford\u2019s Career Development Center, says that in all of his career counseling, he cannot remember getting a question about health insurance from a student.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t come up,\u201d Choy said. \u201cSometimes they ask about retirement, but I don\u2019t think a lot of students think about health insurance much in their 20s unless they\u2019ve got some sort of preexisting condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seniors tend to be the most concerned with the prospect of finding health insurance in the outside world. Tommy Tobin \u201910 was one of a handful of interviewees who expressed concern about his health insurance situation after graduation. However, it was clear which was more important to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWork is a bigger concern,\u201d Tobin said.<\/p>\n
Lindsey Smith \u201910 was also anxious about health insurance post-college. She said a lack of health benefits in one job could end up being a deciding factor if she were to choose between offers. But if employer-based health benefits were scarce, her answer was the same as everyone else\u2019s: she would take any job she could get regardless of the insurance situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would take [a job without benefits] if I didn\u2019t have other options for employment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For students who are further from leaving the \u201cStanford bubble,\u201d the question of health coverage is further from their minds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve thought about what I want to do and where I want to go, but I haven\u2019t considered that [health care coverage] very much,\u201d said sophomore Colin Gray.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still on my family health plan,\u201d said Eric Miller \u201912. He has kept abreast of the debate over health care reform, but said that on a personal level, it hasn\u2019t greatly impacted him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m focusing on my classes for now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For someone looking for work during an unsettled economy, Matthew Janes \u201907 seems to be in a reasonably appealing position. Armed with a Stanford degree in symbolic systems and over a year of experience at Palo Alto tech company mSpot, Janes has the right credentials for a permanent programming job. He is even making some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}