Health care is one of the most hotly debated issues among presidential candidates. But it is also a sensitive issue for a more local constituency: Stanford’s graduate students.

Stanford University, in collaboration with the Health Insurance Advisory Committee and the Graduate Student Council (GSC), decided to discontinue the Dependant Health Care Plan for graduate students in 2006. Though the GSC, Vaden and the graduate students themselves have been searching for a solution to the dilemma of providing adequate and affordable health insurance for graduate students’ families, two years later they have yet to settle on a plan of action.

“The University decided to discontinue the dependant health insurance plan in 2006 because the costs of the plan had escalated to an unsustainable point,” said Ira Friedman, Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs and director at Vaden Health Center, in an email to The Daily. “Relatively few people were enrolled in the plan.”

In 2006, the dependant health insurance rate was $475 per month for a spouse or domestic partner. The figure was projected to increase by more than 50 percent in the 2006-2007 year before the University decided to discontinue the program.

“Since 2006, the Graduate Student Council has tried to collect statistics of graduate student dependant health care plans at other universities,” said GSC Co-President Kristina Keating, a graduate student in Environmental Sciences. “We figured out that Stanford is the only top tier university in the states that doesn’t offer dependant health care for its graduate students.”

“Even back when Stanford did offer dependant health care, the monthly premium rate was much higher than those at other universities such as MIT or Harvard,” Keating added.

The main reason for this discrepancy is that, unlike other universities, Stanford placed the graduates’ dependants in a separate health insurance pool. Since only around 100 dependants from over 75 families were enrolled, costs were high. And as the insurance rate increased, enrollment declined, which caused the insurance rate to increase even more — a phenomenon termed a health insurance “death spiral,” according to Keating.

One potential solution that graduates have suggested is to place the graduates’ dependants on the same health insurance plan as the entire student population. Although such a move would drastically decrease the insurance rate for dependants, Friedman said it could potentially increase rates across the board for all students.

“Combining the dependant program with the lower-cost student plan Cardinal Care would lead to an unfair burden in terms of increased premiums for the students in Cardinal Care,” Friedman said.

To compensate for the lack of a dependant health care plan, Vaden and the GSC have teamed up to offer workshops and information sessions introducing graduate students to local health insurance programs.

“While these alternate plans aren’t horribly expensive, they’re not that great either,” said Adam Beberg, a graduate student in computer science and GSC parliamentarian. “Health care companies don’t want to insure women between the ages of 18 and 30, so even if you can get insurance here, you’re constantly worried that they’re going to drop you. That adds a lot of stress to graduate students with families.”

For David Erickson, another graduate student in computer science, this lack of dependant health insurance seems frustrating. As a 27-year-old married masters student deciding amongst a number of graduate programs, health care is one of his main considerations in the decision.

“My wife is an elementary school teacher, and this graduate program will be around four or five years long,” Erickson said. “Sometime in that period, we would like to have a child or two.”

After researching the finances, however, Erickson soon realized that without affordable dependant health care from Stanford, his wife would have to keep working while they have children.

“If I stay here for graduate school, then I have to take on a lot of student debt to cover my wife and future child’s health care,” Erickson said. “Otherwise my wife is going to be miserable. And after all the stress and work, she would only be bringing home approximately $600 per month if you deduct health care costs, day care costs, taxes, etc.”

Keating said Stanford’s lack of affordable dependant health care could negatively affect the attractiveness of Stanford to graduate students choosing between different programs.

“The greatest concern is that graduate students with families, or students who plan on starting families in the course of their study, will choose other schools over Stanford because of this lack of dependant health care,” Keating said.

If Stanford loses its ability to recruit top graduate students, Erickson said the University’s long-term prestige could be negatively affected.

“I feel that since graduate students drive the prestige of the University through research and patents, the University would take good care of its graduate students,” Erickson said. “It seems wrong that a school with a hospital and complete medical program can’t deliver a health care plan to graduates’ dependants.”

The problem is even worse for international students, who make up approximately one-third of the graduate student population, according to Keating.

“It’s a loosely enforced rule that graduates’ dependants must have health insurance,” Keating said. “But the spouses of international students cannot work, so it is even harder for them to obtain or pay for health care.”

“It’s a complex issue,” Keating added. “Vaden has been very supportive, and we continue to look for solutions. We simply advocate that the University do more research on the issue and find a compromise in the near future.”

Friedman said the solution will probably not reinstate the dependant insurance plan.

“Although we have continued to search for solutions, the underlying realities have remained the same,” Friedman said. “It’s not affordable to insure a small group of people with very high medical costs, so I doubt that we can reinstate the dependant insurance plan.”