DAILY LOBO new mexico
September 24, 2010
Hope springs eternal see page 6
A LEG UP ON THE COMPETITION
PIRG: health bill benefits students
friday
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
by Ruben Hamming-Green rhamminggreen@gmail.com
Student activists dressed in hospital scrubs worked to spread awareness about national health care legislation that went into effect Thursday. New Mexico Public Interest Researsh Group’s student activists were out in full force, educating peers about new health insurance options. As part of the act, students can now stay on a parent’s insurance plan until age 26, and another change forbids insurers to drop coverage because of paperwork errors. Beverly Kloeppel, director of the Student Health Center, said the legislation is a step in the right direction and will help save money. “Early intervention and prevention help with medical costs in the longterm,” she said. “For example, (it’s the difference between) coming in when they have a respiratory infection that isn’t going away on it’s own, as opposed to having to be hospitalized for pneumonia.” Health care reform doesn’t stop there. In 2014, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. Individuals will also be required to have insurance. Dede Feldman, a state senator, said more than 430,000 people in the state are uninsured, and that burden of not having insurance falls on taxpayers. “People insured here pay some of the highest premiums in the nation,” she said. “When people don’t have insurance, what happens when they get sick? They go to the emergency room, and the hospital has to absorb the cost.” Joel Galles, president of the College Republicans, said no matter what, someone will have to foot the bill. “The health care bill is going to be a huge burden on the next generation of taxpayers,” he said. “It’s going to plunge our country further into debt. There is no doubt that changes need to be made to the health care system. This is a little bit drastic.” What’s most unsettling, Kloeppel said, is that U.S. health care is more expensive than in other countries, and it’s not necessarily better care. “Our health indicators for things like longevity and infant mortality are not as positive as countries that spend less on health care,” she said. “We do some things better than any other nation, but overall our health indicators don’t indicate that we get very much bang for our buck.” Feldman said insurances costs need to be standardized. “It becomes a very difficult stranglehold to break. As the cost of insurance goes higher, more people drop insurance,” she said. “It becomes a vicious cycle.”
Inside the
Daily Lobo volume 115
issue 25
Dylan Smith/ Daily Lobo Student David Pinter kicks out his leg mid-roll on Smith Plaza on Thursday evening.
Graduate students feel sting of cuts by Chelsea Erven cerven@unm.edu
Since last spring, UNM administrators have been developing a plan to help the University cope with more than 3 percent in budget cuts. Still, the cuts have major effects that have already trickled down to each department, as each struggles to scrape together its own 2011 financial plan. Mark Peceny, chair of the political science department, said departments have not implemented their plans, which must be approved by the Provost and the Board of Regents. He said the University decided not to slash staff and faculty salaries, and instead cut departments’ operating budgets and graduate assistants’ salaries. “If we don’t touch our staff and faculty salaries, that takes about 85 percent of our budget off the table,” Peceny said. “We are left with cutting things in our operating budget like telephones, money for conference travel expenses, paper, toner and ink.” In a memorandum to the provosts, UNM President David Schmidly said “cost containment” will be the route administration will take to balance the budget, a strategy that means minimizing administrative spending in all areas, offices and functions. Schmidly said food, printing, equipment, furniture and computer expenditures will require approval by department deans and directors. The political science department is charged with cutting $53,000, but Peceny said its
Robert Maes/ Daily Lobo A political science department representative taped a sign onto one of the department’s copiers that reads, “Please see office staff for the use of this machine.” Limiting printing and copying is just one of the ways the political science and other departments are coping with budget cuts. operating budget is $35,000. “Even if our entire operating budget is gone, we still can’t make the cut, and that’s left most of the College of Arts and Sciences with no choice but to look at the graduate assistant positions,” he said. According to a Sept. 3 mandate from Provost Suzanne Ortega, base budget reductions and mid-year rescissions enacted from March 2009 to July 2010 have totaled more than $21 million for UNM’s main campus. But, a two-part
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Question of the Week
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strategy consisting of cost containment and tax increases have been developed to cope with budget challenges. Still, Ortega’s mandate made it is clear that most budgets cuts cannot be met without cutting personnel costs. She said in a news release that layoffs, phased reductions in staffing, planned retirements and voluntary furloughs are approaches to be considered at the departmental level.
see Budget Cuts page 2
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