An Update on SFU Health Plan Politics
StudentUnion.ca has learned that several directors of the Simon Fraser Student Society are doing classroom speaking, explaining to students that they are trying to bring then a "non profit undergraduate health care plan." There is only one such plan in Canada: the National Student Health Network. The Board of Directors has never decided to limit their health plan choices to non profit entities, nor has any such decision been made by an entity acting under delegated authority.
StudentUnion.ca has learned that several directors of the Simon Fraser Student Society are doing classroom speaking, explaining to students that they are trying to bring then a "non profit undergraduate health care plan." There is only one such plan in Canada: the National Student Health Network. The Board of Directors has never decided to limit their health plan choices to non profit entities, nor has any such decision been made by an entity acting under delegated authority.
14 Comments:
Alright, that'ts it.
For a while this site was quite interesting to read. It was nice to keep up to date with the happenings at universities and college's accross Canada but the site has gone to hell. How many posts do we have to read about SFSS. Sigh, report about anything else, please. For the love of god.
A student
Screw that guy Titus. I want to see this disaster out to its end! Keep reporting.
While there may be one student non profit broker, there are a few non-profit health insureres... Blues Cross, Pacific Blue Cross and Greenshield. I believe that they were all established by unions to provide a non-profit alternatives.
Many for-profit brokers can get you quotes from these folks if you seek a non-profit insurance company.
That's a good point. I did not know that Blue Cross was non-profit.
This website indicates that Pacific Blue Cross is a part of Blue Cross:
http://www.bluecross.ca/regionalplans.html
Problem is, this site's only got one guy at SFU doing the "news". Apart from that, he's relying on student newspapers to report news, which he can relay to the rest of us.
Maybe the problem is that the student press across the country isn't breaking any interesting stories...I sure know that CFS and CASA don't get asked any hard questions about how they spend money, and how they conduct their business. To the extent that this SFSS stuff is interesting, it's precisely because some people are questioning some of the crap that goes on in students' names.
Maybe this stuff is tedious - but what we need are ten or a hundred Tituses.
Definitely, we need more student activists and less student politicans.
Isn't there an one element of the equation missing here? Who is the insurance broker working with the National Student Health Network? CFS and Greenshield may be "non-profit" but the broker can't possibly be. Maybe that's why they never make mention of the broker...
Again, there would be a quick way to check the broker's name - but it would require actual transparency. Ever seen any of NSHN's books or annual reports? Me neither. It doesn't even seem to be registered as a federal corporation, which seems odd to me. Does anyone know anything more about its legal structure?
What do you bet CFS gets a big "finder's fee" for each campus that goes on NSHN? That's the way they used to pull money out of Travel CUTS until Rev Can stopped them....
Bingo...http://www.heath.ca/students/
So is Heath Benefits a subsidiary of Heath Lambert?
Look at this little diddy:
"Heath Lambert are the seventh largest insurance and reinsurance broker in the world with 4000 staff in over 80 offices in more than 40 countries world wide and an annual turnover of £250 million." (http://www.dijit.net/portfolio/index.cfm?caseid=16&ms=27)
Sounds really small and non-profit to me...haha...
Heath has been taken over (or joined with??) Morneau Sobeco and they are the National Student Health Network broker.
According to Advice for Invstors Online http://www.fin-info.com
From April-June 2006, Morneau Sobeco's profit was $32.8 million, up 6.4% over the past year in the same period. Note, that is 3 months profit!
While I agree that student money is helping line those CEO pockets, I also think it is important to remember that the CFS is just one of many companies and organizations that are struggling to contain health costs, and brokerage fees are not the only problem. There are also patent laws that allow old drugs to be tweaked and then repatented in order to keep the costs high. Check out Selling Sickness, a great book about this issue.
http://sellingsickness.blogspot.com/
The CFS of course has its problems, so maybe this is a case of a good idea poorly managed.
Would moving to a different broker improve things? If Greenshield and Blue Cross were founded by the unions to profit non-profit insurance, who brokers for the unions? Maybe we should look into those brokers?
The Campus Trust is non profit. www.thecampustrust.ca
It appears that the Campus Trust is just another advisory group. I think that the broker is SBTA (check out the Campus Trust's contact us section on their website...the email is admin@sbta.ca).
On SBTA's website you will see that they are a division of the PBAS Group:
"The PBAS Group has been in the Benefits Industry in Canada for 18 years. The total client benefit plan assets administered by the PBAS group of companies approaches $2 Billion. It services over 1 million plan members through its offices located across Canada."(http://www.sbta.ca/JSP/public/pbas_overview.jsp)
It seems like everyone's trying to play the non-profit card but it's false advertising. With additional layers like the NSHN or the Campus Trust, I bet that they actually cost students more (meetings, travel costs etc.). Bureaucracy at its finest....
The Campus Trust is a trust fund therefore it is audited by a independent auditor disclosing all information to student organizations regarding premiums and claims. SBTA, the trust's consultant is paid on administration & consulting only as they are indeed a Third Party Administrator not a broker.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home