AUSU recently opened a new student program, health and dental insurance. If you’ve been at a brick-and-mortar institution recently, such a thing probably isn’t at all unheard of. In fact, you probably get automatically enrolled in such a plan and have to deliberately opt-out if you don’t want to pay the fee (although that fee is often extremely cheap for insurance.)
Given this though, and given that the average AU student is somewhat older, and may already have some form of insurance, it’s always been important for AUSU to ensure the service is opt-in. In addition, AUSU has somehow managed to make it guaranteed acceptance without medical exams.
I’m not sure how this works. When you combine opt-in, no medical exam, and guaranteed acceptance, it seems like a recipe to ensure that anyone who actually needs insurance will be signing up, but insurance companies typically make their money by signing up those who ideally don’t need to access the service.
I’ve briefly explored the portal, and it seems that the prices are reasonable, though not hugely discounted from what you might find with a private insurer, and the coverage is comparable or possibly slightly better than some other private insurance plans I’ve seen. So, if you don’t have private insurance already, you may want to consider signing up. If nothing else, the coverage for other services, such as acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic might be useful, and not having to worry if you suddenly start needing some prescriptions covered is certainly worth something as well.
Meanwhile, this week in the Voice Magazine, we start with a fiction feature which just irks me a little bit. It involves the popular myth of lemmings stampeding over a cliff, which is what irks me. This is myth that started, surprisingly enough, because of a Disney documentary and has some ties down here to Calgary. What irks me about the myth isn’t so much that it’s a myth, but that anybody would believe it. That anybody would think any animal commits some sort of mass suicide, whether intentional or not, simply doesn’t make sense if you understand anything about how evolution works. It irks me because it lessens my faith in humanity. As if what’s going on right now around the world isn’t enough to do that already.
And on that note, one of our other features is a look at war in general, and how its costs extend well beyond those who are actually fighting. Also this week, a bit of a self-indulgent piece, as Marie Well wrote on what she’s gained from writing for The Voice Magazine.
And I’m hoping someone like you reads it and decides you might like to try writing for The Voice as well.
Enjoy the read.
