Jeffrey Butler will have to drop out of nursing school unless theUniversity of the Virgin Islands gets a health insurance program forits students within six months.
A Type 1 diabetic, Butler cannot afford to let his insurancelapse. If it does, insurance companies can consider his diabetes,and any of the ailments that can be related to it, pre-existingconditions. What's more, as he does clinical rounds at SchneiderHospital, Butler will have to worry every time a needle slips, everytime a glove breaks, that he could be contracting a disease hecannot afford to get treated.
Several of his fellow students already have that worry. Aspresident of the student nursing association, Butler regularly givestalks to nursing classes. He tells them about his work to getstudent health coverage and asks them to raise their hands if theydo not have insurance.
'Across the board, at least half of the nursing students don'thave health coverage at all,' Butler said.
The vast majority of stateside colleges and universities offer ahealth insurance program to their students. UVI charges each studenta $28-per-semester 'medical insurance fee,' which buys them visitswith the school nurse and a general practitioner who comes to campusfor one hour a day, three days a week. The fee also pays medicalbills for full-time students involved in an accident at a university-sponsored event.
If they need health coverage beyond that, UVI students are ontheir own.
While workers' compensation insurance covers employees of theterritory's hospitals and medical centers, student nurses are notcovered under V.I. worker's compensation laws. UVI is required topurchase liability insurance to cover nursing students on theirrounds so the school cannot be sued if students make mistakes. Butthat insurance does not provide medical care to any student who hasan accident or contracts a disease at the hospital.
Dirty work is a rite of initiation at a hospital, Butlerexplained, and nursing students are often given tasks that bringthem in touch with bodily fluids, heightening the risk of diseaseexposure.
'The nursing students will do the dirtiest of the dirty jobsbecause we are at the bottom of the totem pole,' he said. 'You'rethe newbie. On clinical rotations, you're changing grown men'sdiapers.'
If something goes wrong on rounds, nursing students can getlimited follow-up care at the UVI's medical center. But for seriousissues, they are on their own.
Diane Mancino, president of the National Student NursingAssociation, said UVI students are in a unique situation.
'I can't understand how this happens in nursing. There's concernsabout health that should be very heightened, understanding howsomething can happen to these students when working in hospitals,'Mancino said. 'Most students cannot go into a clinical area withoutsome proof they have access to health care. Where's the liability ifsomething happens? Where's the liability if they wind up with adisease?'
The National Student Nursing Association provides healthinsurance for its members under United Healthcare. However, Uniteddoes not write student policies in the Virgin Islands, and UVIstudents are currently unable to qualify for the plan.
Butler said he began lobbying for a student health insurance planbefore he was even enrolled at the university. A career mariner, hewas diagnosed with diabetes at 33 and nearly lost his Coast Guardcaptain's license because of his condition. Butler decided that hewas not devoting enough attention to his health while he was on theopen water and made plans go back to school to become a registerednurse and diabetes educator.
Although Butler was admitted to two stateside colleges, as a Navybrat who was home schooled on a blanket on Magens Bay Beach, Butlerdecided that even though UVI did not offer insurance he did not wantto leave.
'The fact of the matter is this is my home,' he said. 'This is mycommunity.'
Butler thought he had figured out a way to keep his healthcoverage anyway. But, like many Americans, he was wrong.
'I had a good plan, but the plan faltered,' he said.
Butler was going to keep running the sailing division of AtlantisSubmarines while he went to school, but Atlantis went out ofbusiness. He took a job bartending at Marriott Frenchman's Cove, forthe benefits, but the resort's management was not willing to workwith his school schedule, he said. So Butler left for a job thataccommodates his classes, but it does not offer health benefits.
Using a provision under the federal COBRA law, Butler iscurrently paying $500 a month to stay on Marriott's plan. COBRA,however, is designed to be a temporary bridge between health plansand he will stop being eligible for that plan in October. Butlersaid that if UVI does not get student health insurance by then, hewill have no choice but to leave school and find a full-time jobwith benefits.
'Once you have a preexisting condition, it changes everything,'he said.
Butler said he tried to get former UVI President LaVerne Ragsterto initiate an insurance plan, but Ragster was under the impressionthat students already had insurance coverage.
In an interview Tuesday, Ragster told the Daily News that UVIstudents have always been offered health insurance.
Late last year, Butler set up a meeting with the university's newpresident, David Hall, to discuss the insurance issue and met withhim again in January to discuss progress on an insurance plan.
Hall told The Daily News that his administration recently sampledUVI students and found that 38 percent of those questioned did nothave health insurance.
'If one extrapolates from that sample, then there is asignificant number of students who don't have that type of extensivecoverage,' he said.
Hall said he created a task force to get insurance quotes andhopes to have a proposal ready for students by the end of the year.
'We need a concrete proposal to put before the students,' hesaid. 'In order to adopt it, there will be some cost to thestudents. We need to make sure we have the best offer we can get andunderstand how that program operates.'
- Contact reporter Constance Cooper at 774-8772 ext. 364 or e-mail ccooper@dailynews.vi.
