GSHIP

Page created to place information for UCD graduate students to follow the UCSA GSHIP campaign. Copied from the 2009-2010 External Chair page.

The GSA Executive Council has been working to improve GSHIP, particularly obtaining dependent health care benefits.

December 8, 2008 Grad students feel effects of struggling health insurance industry
June 2, 2009 UCSA collecting testimonials from grad students
November 17, 2009 UC group develops graduate student health care plan, PDF

GSHIP Campaign

Information about the Request for Proposals (RFP) from UCOP.

Here is the current standard plan for the system-wide GSHIP program. It is important to hear from students regarding their specific needs before a final plan is contracted. Please leave feedback in the comments section.

GSHIP Standard Plan (draft).pdf

I have been trying to keep our campus in the loop about the UCSA GSHIP Campaign since last academic year.

I recently found out that the request for bids will go out for the system-wide GSHIP campaign through updates from the Graduate-Professional Student Committee at UCSA. With this, I felt that the GSA should get more involved in this process, as bids start to come in, we should be able to look at the proposals and bids. We want to make sure that the new plan, if adopted by the Regents/UCOP will at minimum meet our current plans' coverage and preferably enhance it (particularly with dependent health care). I have scheduled a meeting with those individuals in administration who have been working on this campaign during system-wide meetings.

Graduate Studies Associate Dean Lenora Timm is the contact our campus who has been working with the administrators from other campuses and UCOP on the system-wide GSHIP proposal. They have been working together for since last academic year on what to include in a system-wide plan. Timm has put a strong emphasis on dependent health care as an option for the plan. Very recent data from the retention survey projects about 30% of our students have one more dependant. In the "insurance world" once you hit 1000 the cost of service on a group plan goes down therefore it could be feasible that between all of the campuses there is at least 5000 students with dependents; although it is likely the number is larger. The system-wide group sent out a RFP and these will be presented to the committee within the next few days. Timm has requested we start a committee to specifically review the bids and determine if any will meet the needs of our campus. I've been in contact with the administrative coordinator for the current UCD SHIP committee to obtain the names of the graduate and professional students currently serving on that committee. I've also been in contact with student leaders from the vet and law schools; so once these meetings start, all those covered on our current SHIP plan who would move to the new GSHIP plan (if approved) will be represented in the meeting.

A webinar was hosted to train each campuses' workgroups on how to score the GSHIP bids.

Met with the UCD workgroup to discuss our progress on scoring, decided we all need to do our individual scoring this week. We will meet this week to compare our scoring and decide which proposal we'd like to send as our campus recommendation.

Dean Timm met with the system-wide work group, this information is confidential at this time but at the meeting they reviewed all of the campuses' scores of the plans given to us.

UCSA asked for more student representation on the system-wide GSHIP workgroup. I sent an email indicating that if meetings were held at UCOP, the students on the Davis GSHIP work group could attend and I would facilitate transportation.

I was granted access to the conference call, as part of the system-wide workgroup, to discuss the financial aspects of the plan. At this time, I cannot report any information as this is still confidential. However, this information is to be presented to the University Office of the President as a potential Regent's item to mandate system-wide graduate student coverage (at this time, only undergraduates have this mandate and graduate student mandates are campus by campus) and potentially vote on creating a system-wide plan.

We submitted a letter to the Regents to support the vote for a system-wide mandate on GSHIP for graduate and professional students, GSHIP EC Statement.pdf. The Regents unanimously voted to make GSHIP a mandatory non-academic requirement for the UC system. This change has been sought by the Student Health and Counseling Directors for many years and it would not have occurred this year without the support of the GSHIP committee and the strong support of UCOP and The Regents.

The GSHIP and UCSA Grad/Prof Committee met via conference call to discuss the next phase in the GSHIP plan, to present recommendations to UCOP for implimentation and cost-savings plans.

GSHIP Factsheet_draft.pdf
GSHIP Newspaper Article.pdf I sent a copy of this to the Aggie 11/4/09; asking for publication on this issue
GSHIP_Postcard_to_the_Regents.pdf Please feel free to have students fill these out and return them to the GSA office, we will collect these and send them to UCOP on your behalf

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