I'm not sure why the Bednar-Lite officials at BYU-I came up with their idiotic plan to require students on Medicaid to also purchase a separate health insurance policy. Whatever it was, a week of national bad publicity (it was an NYTimes story yesterday) convinced them it was a bad idea.

My guesses as to why they did this was that Medicaid includes contraceptive coverage. Or maybe they just wanted to signal their deep disapproval of the gummint providing health insurance to poor people.

They have reversed course, and apologized for the "turmoil" (their word)

[ETA: https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2019/11/26/byu-idaho-reverses-course/

The initial policy came the day after the Medicaid Expansion took effect in Idaho, so having a gummint policy must have been the problem. The legislatures in Utah and Idaho had refused to approve the expansion for years, until finally the citizens in both states overrode the legislatures and approved the expansion by wide margins. The citizens thought that walking away from hundreds of millions of dollars each year AND denying their second poorest group of residents health coverage was absurd. Imagine that]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2019 10:36AM by Brother Of Jerry.

I'd put my money on a desire to grow their own insurance plan, the one administered by a Deseret 'something-or-other' entity. In my mind, that would be their usual modus operandi.

And they would have been trying it out at BYU-I, to work the bugs out before unleashing ghawd's will on the other two schools.

I agree. They were beta testing and hadn't talked to anyone who actually worked in healthcare.

The Church seems to always have some kind of church-affiliated business that they've set up to serve as (impliedly) a morally superior alternative to a gentile business offering or secular program. When I was at YBU, I ran into such things often. Upon examination, they always offered less at a higher cost. Great business model if you're on the side of the balance sheet allocated to the people who are running the business.

"But it's run by church people, so you know it's got to be better, right?"

No, they wanted students to purchase insurance from church owned Deseret Insurance. No other reason, just pure greed.
If only they had someone in management that could've foreseen the backlash and negative publicity......

I thought that it was about selling their own coverage too, but they used to accept Medicaid coverage, and only made the change the day after the Medicaid Expansion took effect in Idaho. That could not have been coincidence.

ETA: on rereading the rather long article, maybe it was about the money. They would lose as customers the students that now qualified for Medicaid. I still think that Mormon students getting contraceptive coverage, and having the citizens of Idaho overruling the (heavily Mo) state legislature also rankled).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2019 11:02AM by Brother Of Jerry.

That change probably allowed someone who might benefit from pushing a change from Medi-care to the church's private plan to make the apparently unsupported claim that the local medical providers wouldn't be able to handle the increased demand.

Which begs the question, wouldn't putting a bigger population into private plans have had the same unsettling effect?

Makes one wonder if any of these administrators can look any further in the future than their pocket book.

My wife just recently retired working for a medical office and said the insurance business is a real con-game, who pays and who don't.

If you are using the Medicare or Medicaid, the doctor might charge $100 for a certain procedure. Medicare says the normal charge is $80, then Medicare will pay 70% of the "normal" cast.

If other words, the doctor gets $56 for a procedure that he would normal get $100.

Seems to me the BYU-I administrators have some interest in what the local medical businesses are making. They make less money, 10% for tithing makes less.

It's the old story, follow the money.

Such inspiration!

(I posted the comments below in another thread.)

Wow. Bad PR that exposes their real motives gets results.

I can't remember who it was on Twitter, but someone very well known made comments like, "the students should leave and go to a real school." LOL

BYUI really tarnished their brand.
This is another example of why the press needs to be unmuzzled.

Kudos to the students who organized and to the press who reported this where it was nationally exposed.

You have to wonder about the competency of the administration there, let alone their lack of concern for the students. At least the students didn't have beards or shorts.

Another person on Twitter said on 11/22/19: "Some byuidaho admins are now telling students that any information about Medicaid not given by the university is false and should be ignored. Several students reported that admins freaked out when they pulled out notebooks during meetings."

So much for teaching to have faith and not delay having kids because the Lord will provide. I guess the Lord had to send a memo to church admin.

The story of the reversal was on NPR this morning....

Yes, the lord god HATES bad publicity!!!!


NPR story included an interview with a BYU-I whose finances were ready to tank because of the former policy, this gave their story huge impact.


it's a new day for ChurchCo decisions & policies, isn't it?

Maybe my viewpoints differ from everyone elses? but it's a shame that they reversed the policy. If these darling adult children don't have insurance then they should grow up. They are old enough and should go get a job that provides and stop living on government money, parents, society, and taxes. It pains me to no end to say it, and brings a tear to my eye.

The trouble is too many poor people are going to college when their real place is in the workforce. Learning the mental gymnastics of algorithms and protein synthases isn't going to put food on the table. Just this morning there was another article in the standard examiner whining about college kids not getting enough counselling, that they are mentally ill, and in need. If that's true then once again, they should go get a job and drop out of college. College is for the elites and the talented 10%. The rest of us don't need it.

Perhaps mR hasn't been in touch, but manufacturing jobs are disappearing in the U.S.A., union membership is Tanking, those are the positions that provided family-supporting incomes.

we live in the 'age of information', occupations for now & the future aren't shoveling coal into steam engines, making buggy whips, etc.

Designing systems, computer algorithms, being medical professionals, etc. require college educations, some of which are migrating down to high-school classes!


now you know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2019 01:09PM by GNPE.

Amen!

You're kind of missing the point, maca. They have insurance. They were being told they needed to pay for a second, completely unnecessary redundant policy. That's both stupid and vindictive.

Is that a government subsidy for college students? You bet it is. What's wrong with that? People who get college degrees on average earn considerably more than people without degrees, and will eventually pay more taxes.

Students who get to stay on their parents insurance until age 26 are also subsidized. Students who get married lose that subsidy (they can't stay on their parent's insurance). That means Mormons tend to lose that subsidy. OTOH, about the only way a student can qualify for either Medicaid or food stamps or the earned income credit on income tax is by having children. You need dramatically low income to qualify for those programs if you don't have children. So, Mormon kids may lose the parental coverage subsidy, but they qualify for Medicaid and the earned income credit and all that.

People are really funny (or hypocritical if you prefer) about what government subsidies they have no problem with, and what ones they deem immoral somehow. Child tax credit, earned income credit, pell grants: no problem. Medicaid and SNAP, are considered immoral, though the dollar value of the first three is often higher than the value of the last two, and all but Pelli grants overwhelmingly apply to families with dependent children, a situation Mormon college students are encouraged to be in.

But I digress. Medicaid IS health insurance. It mostly covers parents with children, a situation rare among college students, unless they are Mormon. Single students usually don't qualify.

I'm ok with subsidizing college students. I used to teach college, and I think the cost of textbooks and tuition borders on criminal. Even if they are getting a break on some living expenses, most of them still have a really tough row to hoe, and my hat's off to them.

Agreed from start to finish.

College education produces massively more income over the course of a lifetime as well as inculcating a sense of civic responsibility. Discouraging tertiary education is the fastest way for a country to leap onto the garbage heap of history.

And entitlements/government subsidies are good or bad depending solely on one's perspective. If they are my entitlements, they are justly deserved and it is a sin for anyone to consider reforming them; if they are the entitlements of people unlike me, they are unfair, socialistic, and a threat to the country's values and future. That's the bottom line. The faith in the distinction between good and bad government subsidies is based on emotion and impervious to both logic and data.

So you subscribe to the Dickens Insurance Method, it looks like. No insurance, no money, IT'S THE POOR HOUSE FOR YOU!

When I grow up I want to become a Longshoreman! That way, from what I've read, I'll neither have to have an education nor will I have to work very hard.

the operators of those container cranes you see at ports aren't represented by 'longshoremen', they're represented by the operating engineers, same as building construction cranes & other similar occupations.

'longshore' jobs are disappearing too, just check on that.

. . . and you'd get to meet Marlon Brando!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2019 03:02PM by Lot's Wife.

It was stupid. On the one hand, they're telling young people/students to risk poverty in order to raise many little Mormon kids unto the church. On the other hand, they're telling young, poor child-breeding people that their poor people's insurance is not welcome.

It's because the suits are John Birch Society "small government" states' rights gut-all-social-programs kill-the-safety-net conservatives who act on principle: Laissez faire economic darwinism.