Recognize the flaws in the insurance system
I am dismayed by the opinion of David Lazar (“Voting Democratic bad for your health,” Viewpoint Jan. 31.) I was disappointed by the following comment:
“Since current health is a good predictor of future medical spending, it makes sense for people in worse health to pay higher premiums.”
This exactly violates the idea of risk-sharing that insurance provides. The idea behind insurance is that a group of individuals pool their money so that anyone of the group who is unfortunate enough to experience a devastating loss is made whole by the pool. Lazar is advocating a system that protects you until you need it, then drops you by the side of the road.
One of the great tragedies of our current system is that someone who loses his or her insurance through job change or loss of employment, at a time when that person or a member of the family is ill, cannot qualify for individual insurance or cannot afford it at the ridiculously high rates offered.
At the time when the ill need it most, the protection that insurance affords becomes unavailable to them. They may have paid into the system for years, never making a claim, and suddenly find themselves uninsurable.
A graduate economics student should certainly understand the flaws in a system that allows insurance companies the ability to drop someone because they have the temerity or misfortune to use the protection they purchased.
Randy Farber, MHA
UCLA School of Public Health, Class of ’81
UCLA must address green issue in-house
I was pleased to see UCLA participate in “Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions for America,” and congratulations should go to the Institute of the Environment for leading such a successful program.
However, just on my way to my office it was easy to note many examples in which UCLA is behind the curve in minimizing carbon emissions and in other aspects of sustainability.
I passed a worker cleaning the walk with a noisy, gasoline-guzzling blower of the type the city council has tried to ban.
I passed recent plantings on the science quad, all non-native, high-water-use plants, as well as the tremendous investment in an irrigation system to sustain them.
I then entered my office and noted the single glazed windows that can barely close ““ I installed energy-efficient, double-glazed windows in my home years ago.
Green building standards are not yet the norm for new construction on campus. It is high time for UCLA to address greenhouse warming and sustainability consistently in its own house.
David K. Jacobs
Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Regents’ ideas should not hurt students
In “Record numbers apply to UC,” (News, Jan. 30), Lucy Benz-Rogers writes about the increase of applicants to the University of California for the upcoming school year. UCLA alone received 55,369 applications, more than a 9 percent increase from last year’s previous record-breaking number.
Although this is very exciting news, in light of the proposed $331.9 million budget cut to the University of California, the UC Board of Regents is considering different options to offset the cut. Some of these options include another student-fee increase or even cutting enrollment by 5,000.
These are not viable options.
In the past six years, fees have skyrocketed more than 85 percent while executive compensation and nuclear program funding has increased. If the regents pass another fee hike over 7 percent, fees would have raised over 90 percent in the last seven years.
Simply put, students cannot afford another fee increase.
Applicants from underrepresented communities increased as well.
Since last year, there was a 12.9 percent increase of black first-year applicants and 17 percent increase of Chicano and Latino first-year applicants.
With a record-breaking amount of applicants and as a university that seems less accessible to many underrepresented or working-class students, enrollment should not be cut.
Increasing fees and cutting enrollment will only hurt students, a constituency that does not get prioritized when the UC Regents make decisions. Students are fired up and ready to take action.
The University of California Students Association is committed to advocating an accessible, affordable and quality UC.
Gregory Cendana
Fourth-year, sociology and labor and workplace studies