Our IU Health 'Care'

Come 2014, I plan on jet-setting around the world, then coming back to Bloomington to finish my degree.

Unfortunately IU hourly employees’ futures don’t look quite so bright. 

In an email sent out in late April, Associate Vice President Daniel Rives announced the University’s plan to comply with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act for 2014.
 
Under the Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare,” employers can either A) offer all full-time employees healthcare or B) pay a fine for each full-time employee who is not covered. 

The ACA specifies that a full-time employee works at least 30 hours a week.
In order to comply, our University has opted for option C. 

Rives’ email states: “Hourly (temporary, seasonal, student, work study), with or without retirement --- number of hours worked shall be limited to 29 hours per week, effective July 1, 2013 --- no eligibility for medical coverage.”

Not only are these people ineligible for healthcare through their employer, they are now officially underemployed.

These are people who are obviously willing to work, but IU is denying them that chance just to shave a little bit off of their budget.

Once again, IU puts money before people, displaying their admirable priorities.

This is circumvention, not compliance, and it is infuriating.

The ACA has helped college students by extending the period of time we can use our parents’ health insurance, but IU has made the decision to use the ACA against hourly employees.

Our school has created a scenario in which already privileged university students get one more advantage over the workers who help form the foundation of what keeps this school running. 

IU is an educator and an employer, and it owes its employees more than 29 hours a week and well-wishes when it comes to health.

An apple a day will keep the doctor away, especially if an apple is the only healthcare you can afford.

While IU is at fault, the Indiana Statehouse’s complicity should not be ignored. IU only received 16 percent of its funding from the State of Indiana in 2012.

By 2020, this proportion is expected to drop to only 10 percent. 

IU is barely a public institution anymore. 

If every subsidized industry that received government funds was denoted “public,” the US would be a veritable worker’s paradise. 

Indiana, “our Indiana,” is a poser, public in name only. 

This section has repeatedly slammed the statehouse for its focus on extraneous laws, and for good reason.

We literally cannot afford the number of hours being cut from employees and the amount of debt being foisted onto IU students. Yet our state legislators are busy worrying about passing a hunting rights amendment — when to my knowledge, no one’s hunting rights are in danger.

Rives’ email is just one more example of how education and employment are being mis-managed in Indiana. 

Our legislators owe us more, and our University owes us more.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu