Graduate School officials and students are proposing a plan that would provide funding for healthcare insurance for graduate students -- something many southeastern universities already offer.

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"Competitiveness is a problem for the grad school," said Jeff Lake, vice president of the University's Graduate Student Association. "It's also disastrous for students to be without insurance."

In the draft of the Graduate School's five-year strategic plan, which outlined the school's goals for the next five years, $1.5 million annually was requested to provide funding for healthcare insurance for graduate students. If the proposal passes, this would be the first time the University will offer funding specifically for graduate healthcare insurance.

Maureen Grasso, dean of the graduate school, said obtaining healthcare insurance for graduate students is a "priority issue" for the University.

"(Graduate students) expect access to affordable health insurance," she wrote in an e-mail. "Each year the University of Georgia loses highly qualified graduate applicants to other institutions because we do not provide health insurance to graduate assistants."

Graduate students, typically in their 20's and 30's, Lake said, are past the point of being able to rely on their parents' insurance and so must pay for coverage out of their $15,000 to $18,000 income.

Currently, students either purchase the plan from the University Health Center, get plans through spouses or previous jobs, or shop the private markets.

"The problem there is you don't get the advantages of group rates," said Lake, a fourth-year doctoral student in plant biology, "It becomes expensive."

The University's endorsed student health care plan offers up to $250,000 per injury for deluxe coverage, with a premium of $989 for Spring and Summer semesters combined. The basic plan offers up to $100,000 per sickness or injury in coverage with a premium of $894 for Spring and Summer semesters combined. Both of these premiums amount to hundreds of dollars more than at other universities.

Several other southeastern universities, such as Georgia Tech and the University of South Carolina in Columbia, offer healthcare insurance to graduate students but with significantly lower premiums.

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Source: Red and Black.com