Aditi Dholakia
Aditi Dholakia
Picture this: You just graduated from NC State with a degree in communication media. You’ve sent what feels like a hundred copies of your resume to any potential employers who may have even a distant connection to your preferred field of work.
While waiting to hear back, you’ve picked up a part time job, perhaps waiting tables or something similar. In a very slightly different world, you get a job as soon as you graduate, but your employer doesn’t give you any benefits like health insurance or paid vacation. Then you get sick.
At this stage, it’s still possible that you’re a dependent on your parent or guardian’s health insurance, so you only worry a little bit about paying the copay for whatever doctor you have to see. However, for those of you who don’t have dependency and were reliant on NC State’s StudentBlue plans and doctors during school, suddenly you have to decide whether self-medication with store-brand ibuprofen or acetaminophen will be enough to save you the cost of an uninsured doctor’s visit.
For millennials — that is, for our generation — universal health care that not only meets everyone’s minimum coverage requirements, but is also affordable, is paramount to our success upon graduating college.
Although the GOP attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, failed, Republican lawmakers are not backing down. Their goal now is to repeal the ACA with no ready replacement, instead moving to wait until after the repeal to begin drafting a possible replacement.
The original failure of the American Health Care Act, also sometimes known as Trumpcare, was a good thing, but these new propositions from Senate GOP members could shortchange more than 100,000 North Carolinians who currently rely on Medicaid, and more than 550,000 North Carolinians currently relying on the ACA.
With so many people’s health security at risk, surely I can’t be the only person who has lost sleep worrying about the inevitable arrival of my 26th birthday, and the loss of dependency on health insurance that comes with it.
I have a preexisting health condition, as well as inattentive attention deficit disorder. I need reliable health insurance that covers mental illness and physical illness, so that I have access to the doctors and medication that help keep me as healthy and functioning as possible. This is the case for many other people within our generation.
According to a 2016 survey of millennials and health care conducted by the Transamerica Center for Health Studies, “more than half of Millennials report having some health condition.” Furthermore, approximately 54 percent say they have been diagnosed with some sort of chronic illness. The survey also shows an increase in the number of millennials who suffer from mental conditions such as depression, anxiety or ADHD.
The reasons behind such high rates of physical and mental illnesses are too many to count, although extreme financial burden and fear of instability are certainly massive contributing factors. Upon graduation from college, people in our generation have to deal with student loans, lower starting salary rates and massive increases in housing costs, not to mention having to worry about keeping oneself as healthy as possible, so as to avoid any extra costs for doctors or hospital bills.
The introduction and passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has led to record low numbers of uninsured non-elderly American citizens. As of 2016, approximately 10 percent of non-elderly Americans were uninsured — a drop from over 18 percent in 2010, when Obamacare was passed. Among millennials, the rate of uninsured has decreased by more than half from a high of 23 percent in 2013 to just 11 percent in 2016.
While the statistics show a generally positive trend regarding health insurance across the country, the fact still remains that many citizens, a good chunk of whom are millennials, are still wholly uneducated on what it means to be insured, and how to get said insurance.
NC State offers health insurance plans that are mostly paid for through tuition and fees for students enrolled in on-campus classes. The benefits of this include elimination of charges on most visits — for example, if you unexpectedly get sick — and less expensive, more affordable costs for things like lab work, x-rays, physicals, etc.
For students seeking mental health treatment or help, the Counseling Center is free for students and doesn’t require a mental health premium on the student health insurance plan. With all of this, students are more or less covered in terms of health care in college. As soon as we graduate, however, we are left uninsured and uneducated on how to find a coverage plan that’s affordable and meets our individual needs.
The debate taking place over national health care today may be the single most important policy affecting our generation. Will we continue to reserve the best treatments and care for those who can afford it, or will we finally recognize quality health care as a right for every American?