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Immunization costs could stick students
By Allison Bailey
abaile19@mscd.edu

On Feb. 26 Metro’s student government fee review panel held a town hall event to get student feedback for a variety of proposed fee changes, including a $2 health services fee increase.

“We got a lot of feedback for the health services fee,” said Andrew Bateman, head of the Student Government Assembly fee and finance committee. Bateman coordinated the town hall event and said that of the students who offered opinions on the health services fee change, 15 supported it, 15 were against it, and three weren’t sure.

The fee increase would cover the cost of a proposed new policy requiring students to prove they have been inoculated against measles, mumps and rubella in order to attend classes. If the policy is enacted, it will be announced in April, and students will have until Oct. 1 to comply. Students who don’t provide records of vaccinations will have a hold placed on their accounts preventing them from registering for classes the following semester. Students who receive exemptions for religious or medical reasons will be allowed to register as usual but would not be allowed on campus in case of an outbreak.

Charles Ndaki, a film student at Metro, was one of those in favor of the proposal.

“I think it’s a great idea,” he said. “It’s good to immunize people.”

Students that oppose the policy and possible fee increase said they were against vaccination requirement or thought the fees were too expensive already.

There was also some confusion about purpose of the fee increase. One student at the town hall event thought the health services fee increase was for Metro’s health insurance program. Another thought it would pay for a nurse to be on campus to treat sick students.

The increase would actually fund the maintenance of vaccination records and pay for two additional staff members – a registered nurse and a lab tech – to interpret the records, input data into a computer system, and administer vaccinations to students who require them.

Stephen Monaco, director of health services at Metro, said a registered nurse is needed to interpret vaccination records because only a medical professional would be able to tell if the shots a student has received meet state requirements and to be sure vaccination shots aren’t given to students who, for medical reasons, shouldn’t receive them.

According to Bateman, the student review committee will probably recommend the fee increase, but the policy still has a few bugs the committee would like to see worked out.

“Some of our members aren’t absolutely positive it’s the best it could be,” Bateman said. “Part of it is that we weren’t included in the process when it was being created.”

Monaco said the fee would raise $89,000. Bateman said the fee review committee isn’t sure that the full amount of money health services would receive is necessary.

Both Bateman and Monaco pointed out that the health services fee goes up by about a dollar each year to cover inflation and other rising costs, much like a cost-of-living raise. Health services does not get that dollar increase in years when fees increase for other reasons.

Some changes were made to the original proposal in the last few weeks, including a provision that students will not have to pay the fee increase or comply with the new vaccination policy if they have 90 or more credit hours by the end of the spring 2007 semester.

Other changes include reducing the cost of the vaccine from $50 to $45 if students receive their shots on campus. The cost of the blood test to determine if students need to be vaccinated was reduced from $65 to $25.

“We wanted to develop a program that would comply with the state and be as inexpensive as possible for the students, and I think we’ve done that,” Monaco said.

Monaco also pointed out that only about 5 percent of Metro’s student population would need the vaccinations, since the shots are already required to attend high school in Colorado.

For the vaccinations to meet state standards for schools, students will need two shots. At Denver Health it costs $55 per shot, and each shot comes with a $20 administration fee, according to Maricela Galvan, a clerk at the Denver Health immunization clinic.