OMG !! LOL !!

I recieved my bill for the next semester today. For once, I was shocked to see that I owed them $1,057.

Yes, I was shocked that UB was still asking me for money.

See, when I had gotten my funds letter two months ago, I thought I had everything noted correctly that they would owe me, a good amount to cover books and then some. Pell Grants are awesome!

But clearly, that was not the case when I saw my bill.

I found the offending line: “Student Med. Ins.” Then it hit me. I remembered that starting last year, UB’s Student Medical Insurance policy changed. Rather than outright waive it when you started as a freshman, and work on the honor system about you telling them if your coverage was dropped, they started requiring you to waive it every year with their new provider.

See, it is New York State law that if you are ina SUNY school, you must have health insurance. My take on it is, tons of people were lying about them having health insurance, or never telling UB that they lost coverage, and the burden of covering for these students got to be too much for the university. So instead of a mostly opt-in program, they decided to fuck everyone sideways and change policy to an opt-out program.

So I waived the insurance last year, and thought “If they kept it this easy every year, this might not be too bad. Making sure everyone has health insurance is a good thing to do!”

Boy was I wrong. This year’s form was just a little bit different from last year’s, including a few more questions that made it hard for me to do by myself. Last year, all I had to ask for was an insurance card, since all information was there. This year, I had to ask for the card and what the hell our deductible was at.

Why the fuck do they ask me that? They have everything needed to call Blue Cross Blue Shield and find out for themselves. It’s a terrible question, anyway, since it is very vague in terms of an all-encompassing plan like mine. Which deductible do they want? My prescription? Emergency care? Doctor’s visits? Lab work? These are all different amounts.

They want to know every possible bit of information about my provider, from name, address, contact number, and web site. All I should have to say is “Blue Cross Blue Shield” and they should have that already. Hell, in a perfect world, they should have last year’s information and ask me if it’s changed, but that would be too convenient.

At the amount of information they want, it just looks like they just want any reason to say “Sorry, you’re gonna have to stick with this.” and force me to pay for their insurance that I don’t need or want.

Sorry UB, but there are better ways to cover your asses from students that lie.