At the beginning of this term, all of Hopkins' international students are subject to comply with a new health insurance policy preventing them from independently choosing their own insurance company.
Once able to waive the health insurance offered by the school (Chickering Insurance) like U.S. students, many international students are disconcerted with their demoted freedom. In addition, it is now mandatory for those international students who previously opted to use their own insurance plans pay the set 1,300 dollars for the Chickering plan.
According to Lynn Stein, the Clinical Services Manager of the Student Health & Wellness Center, the Student Health Insurance Committee -- comprised of staff and students from all Hopkins campuses including Peabody and SAIS -- is the bureaucratic body, which has enforced this new policy.
Stein defends the new policy, articulating the flaws by relating previous incidents regarding international students. "Many international students are unfamiliar with the high cost of health care in the United States, not to mention deductibles, co-pays, exclusions, pre-exisiting conditions and state mandates. In the past international students have come to the U.S. with less expensive, inadequate insurance coverage, which unfortunately came to light when they needed to us it."
However many international students would beg to differ. Jaclyn Lim, a junior from Malaysia, argues, "I do not know about other students' policy, but I do know that my plan has a better coverage than the school's. So I do not see the point in making international students purchase the school plan if the students' plans are better in the first place. Because of the bureaucracy that exists in the administration of this school, it was really hard to resolve this matter and get the school to let me file a waiver."
According to Newsweek's Top 100 Global Universities, which ranks based on an institution's "openness and diversity," Johns Hopkins University merely sits at 24th behind many American universities such as Harvard, Yale, UCLA and Duke. When investigating these universities' health insurance policies, it was discovered that each of them offers the waiver option to all of its students.
Although stipulations are affixed with specific guidelines that differ on considering the school's location (due to individual state requirements), each student is given the opportunity to present his or her personal health insurance policy for consideration.
According to Harvard University, ranked first and Massachusetts's State Law, "It is the responsibility of the student seeking to waive participation in a qualifying student health insurance program -- not the institute of higher education in which the student is enrolled -- to determine whether the student's health benefit plan has coverage comparable to the coverage offered under a qualifying student health insurance program."
Kwadwo Tettey, a junior from Botswana claims, "We have no choice. We are forced to comply with Hopkins' established insurance program despite our own adequate policies."
Despite rebuttal, the Hopkins administration is standing firm with the new health policy requirement, decided by the committee in March. Many international students protested the policy, due to the hold that was placed by the registrar disabling the right to add and drop courses at the beginning of the school year. Although the committee claims to have received minimal negative student feedback, the Office of the Registrar was the target of many complaints and negotiations.
In the end a handful of international students have fought for their right. Win Pin Ng, a senior Biomedical Engineering major, was able to keep her previous plan through much unnecessary trouble. "The Malaysian government (the sponsor of my scholarship to JHU) had to negotiate with Hopkins in order to waive the new requirement. It was a long process." While this shows that persistence pays off, the dilemma rests upon the tug-of-war between right and needless harassment.
"I did manage to file a waiver finally, but my hold was not released until the end of the second week of classes. Is this a way for Hopkins to make money from international students? Most of us are here without financial aid and on our own expense," Lim said.
