financial aid office
Melrose Place and Med Schools – Cost Passed on to Health Insurance
While flipping channels, I came across an episode of the new Melrose Place series. Surprisingly, a plot line in the episode made me think about the cost of health care in America. One of the main characters, Lauren Bishop, is a student in medical school. She is dedicated to medicine and excels in her classes, but financial strife jeopardizes her education. This is an all-too-common scenario in real life; crushing student loans and the lack of ability to pay have led to a shortage in primary care physicians. There are fewer family doctors available to offer preventative care; this results in more patients resorting to expensive specialists or emergency rooms with serious ailments that could have been nipped in the bud if properly monitored. Health insurers and their patients must cover the increased costs of this.
The case of Melrose’s Lauren is an extreme example of the need to include educational support in any healthcare reform bill. After a mix-up at the financial aid office, her medical school informs her that she will be kicked out if she can’t pay them $25,000 by the end of the semester. Lauren is now out of options, and–this being a nighttime soap–she reluctantly becomes an escort to fund her dream. While obviously a dramatization, the show is unusually realistic in its portrayal of struggling med school students and the financial hardships they often face. How does this affect your health insurance costs? There are several ways in which this happens.
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