Last week I received an unusually thick envelope in the mail. Curiosity quickly turned into sour dismay as I fished out a small, laminated plastic card from the jam of papers inside. It was my insurance card for the Dartmouth Student Group Health Plan. Knowing that I already had my own insurance plan, that card, supposedly a symbol of health and security, represented no gain to me, but rather, it stood for $2,000: sunk. And knowing that I was doomed to some amount of time and paperwork to try to recover a fraction of that amount, I must've looked a bit pained, now burdened and marginally more thrifty, but not by choice.
Upperclassmen can waive enrollment in the Dartmouth Student Group Health Plan before July 1 each year, two months before school begins. In other words, without saying a word, students are automatically charged $2,000 for a service that they may or may not need. If, for whatever reason, the deadline is missed, and the bill is already in your hands, you could send your waiver immediately afterwards. But this would mean incurring a nice $100 per month late fee. It's as if when you sat down at a restaurant, the waiter brought out an extra dish you didn't ask for, charged you for it and asked you to pay for them to bring it back to the kitchen. It sounds almost like a tourist trap.
Whoever devised this scheme deserves credit it's pretty smart. For essentially no work, the College probably earns at least $100 per student. Though one may argue that the onus rests upon the student to be aware of the automatic charge, I must ask whether the practice as a whole is ethical. If a student has waived coverage before, why not ask if they will continue to waive the following year? From the perspective of the College, it would certainly do them good to charge the student again for double coverage, for the sake of that hefty late fee. But my point is this: the student always assumes the inefficiency and its cost, with no attempt at financial courtesy from the College. The administration and billing of the DSGHP could be easily rectified by requiring students to file their waivers well in advance, perhaps even online, as opposed to waiting for students to be late.
Moreover, these costly inefficiencies extend beyond health insurance. The rest of the Dartmouth undergraduate bill arguably creates inefficiencies on the side of the payer, needlessly extending the search for an explanation of a charge, or otherwise not providing it. These can be found with a bit of digging across several sites, much to the inconvenience of the payer, perhaps parents who are not as tech-savvy. Cost descriptions end soon after they begin, often listing a summary charge for multiple services. For example, $277 is paid as a "general student services fee," which covers technology costs or library services and facilities or recreation activities and facilities. How much money is attributed to each is masked by the print, and furthermore, there is distinct slyness in the use of the phrase, "including, but not limited to." Imagine seeing these words on a restaurant bill. It would raise eyebrows. Again, this inefficiency and the potentially overdrawn costs are assumed by the payer. The remedy is easy: aggregate and further itemize all of the charges and their explanations, down to the specific service. It would even be a step forward to simply divide the overall projected cost of "technologies" or "library services" and list that in lieu of a general summary.
We all know that Dartmouth is expensive. But the problem of expense is more complicated than "amount due." I would argue that complaining about expense is not justified without some basic courtesy properly scrutinizing our bills and realizing where these charges truly arise. But the College could vastly improve the murky relationship between overall tuition and the fees we are actually charged. On the other hand, I can't blame the College for not trying. The tuition bill as it stands, and the inefficiencies within, has led to our complacency. It's just too easy to "pay now."
