DAILY LOBO new mexico
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The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
January 29, 2010
UNM works to reduce health insurance costs by Tricia Remark Daily Lobo
With no national health care plan in America’s immediate future, the Student Health and Counseling Center is working to reduce insurance costs for students. The UNM Student Health Insurance Committee met Tuesday to discuss how to make health insurance affordable with benefits. Beverly Kloeppel, Student Health Center director, said students need health insurance because health care is expensive without it. “You really don’t have to have
some major health problem. All you have to do is have an accident — fall on a skateboard, hit your head on a bike — and you can rack up significant costs,” Kloeppel said. More than 700 UNM students pay for UNM health insurance, according to Student Health Insurance Committee statistics. But 35,058 people came to the SHAC for services in 2006. Of those, Kloeppel said about 15 percent of UNM students went without insurance, according to a 2006 survey. The Committee meets periodically for a few months every year, Kloeppel said. They’re working on
uniting all colleges and universities in New Mexico to put together a request for one insurance company with the lowest bid and highest quality. This method, “consortion,” reduces the cost of health care for students. Colleges in Georgia and Arizona have already used this method to reduce insurance costs, she said, and New Mexico Tech is onboard for the plan. UNM offers health insurance per year or semester. The spring and summer 2010 semester rate is $864 for January through most of August. UNM’s insurance is the least
UNM health insurance spring sign-up deadline: Feb. 9 Check the SHAC Web site for the next Student Health Insurance Committee meeting expensive out of three peer institutions. University of Arizona charges $953 for the spring semester and University of Utah charges $156 monthly, according to their Web sites. University of Colorado Boulder came in as the most expensive — a mandatory $1,052.50 for all students without health insurance
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Knuckles
Ryan Garcia / Daily Lobo Gerald Lovato, from Fit No Holds Barred Gym, is a professional MMA fighter. Hear the story of how he came to be a fighter in the Multimedia section at DailyLobo.com. This Multimedia piece is a two-part series with the second piece available next week.
Obama addresses national “deficit of trust” by Oskar Garcia
The Associated Press LAS VEGAS — President Barack Obama’s intense focus on jobs in his first State of the Union speech hit close to home for the millions of Americans who are in a bad mood over their financial distress a year into his term. But it was another line in Obama’s speech that highlighted their deep skepticism that the programs the president discussed will ever lead to any real change. Obama called it a “deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.”
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Many Americans wondered whether lawmakers from both parties would be politically inclined to get jobs and economic plans moving, and whether the nation would be in the exact spot a year from now. “I just hope that he gets cooperation with it, because you know that if he doesn’t and this creates gridlock and nothing gets done, next year we’re going to be in the same place that we are right now,” said Mary Bartels, a 47year-old registered nurse who voted for John McCain in 2008 but has since warmed to Obama. “That’s a very scary thought.” Obama acknowledged in his
speech that the change he wanted everyone to believe in “has not come fast enough” and that economic devastation remains — in joblessness, shuttered businesses and declining home values. Many citizens who tuned into the president’s speech ached for solutions but were wary of his words — aware that in many places voters are no better off than when they lifted Obama to the White House. Voters have grown tired of politics and promises, and want action from Obama and other lawmakers. “You could tell by the body language, how the Republicans just sat
there for so much, that tomorrow it will be business as usual,” said Ethan Ehrlich, a 32-year-old nurse-anesthetist from Miami Beach. Obama’s plan to create jobs was closely watched in states like Nevada and Michigan. Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation last year, with more than 10 percent of housing units hit with at least one foreclosure filing. December unemployment was 13 percent in the state, where rapid tourism growth has collapsed in a spectacular two-year meltdown of job losses, foreclosures and bankruptcies.
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Players at their peak
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LEGISLATIVE SESSION
Senator: Cut top 20 highest salaries by Pat Lohmann Daily Lobo
State Sen. Eric Griego is taking time from his hectic schedule to send a message to UNM President David Schmidly: “In a bad economy where we’re asking students to pay more tuition, how do you justify two or three hundred thousand dollar salaries for 20 folks?” Griego introduced “Good Fiscal Judgment for UNM Salaries” to be voted on by the New Mexico Legislature. It’s called a “joint memorial,” so it’s not a mandate. It urges Schmidly and the Board of Regents to consider cutting pay to 20 or so administrators, who, as reported Jan. 15 by the Albuquerque Journal, make $200,000 to $300,000 a year. “Strictly speaking, the Legislature doesn’t have direct authority managing the University — nor should it,” Griego said. “However, we’re in pretty drastic fiscal times right now. We’re cutting public education. We’re cutting higher education. We’re cutting health care for kids, early childhood. You name it. Every single working and elderly and young New Mexican is having to tighten their belts, and there seems to be one exception to that, and that seems to be the senior management at the University of New Mexico.” President Schmidly is looking to cut administrative costs in face of the budget deficit, said University spokeswoman Susan McKinsey in an e-mail. “Long before Sen. Griego drafted his memorial, President Schmidly had shared with the Regents his commitment to restructure the organization and reduce administration in the face of budget reductions,” McKinsey said. “To date, three-quarters of the University’s budget reductions have come from the administrative side, and an active administrative review is underway. But, it is also important to remember that an institution with a complex budget of well over $2 billion requires capable senior leadership in a number of areas in order to operate effectively and efficiently.” Further, data distributed by Marc Saavedra, director of Government Relations at UNM, places UNM administrators as only six of the 100 highest-paid employees at the University. Instead, 91 are faculty and three are coaches. Saavedra plans to present this data to the Senate Rules
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