On April 11, the Scarborough Campus Students Union (SCSU) held its monthly Board of Directors (BOD) meeting and approved an increase to its noncompulsory Health & Dental Plan fee after the board rejected the motion in March. 

Health & Dental increase, revisited

SCSU President Hunain Sindhu moved a motion to revisit a proposed six per cent increase to the SCSU Health & Dental Plan, raising the fee from $234.19 to $248.56 per semester. The Health portion of the plan increased from $103.58 to $109.79 per semester, and the Dental portion of the plan from $130.91 to $138.76 per semester.

Since the March meeting, the board learned that increasing the fee was required to maintain the current services, not to fund additional benefits as previously believed. In an interview with The Varsity, Sindhu said, “The Board of Directors weren’t really informed on what [we] were voting on because [we] weren’t really provided much information.”

Without a fee increase, Sindhu explained that “The [Health & Dental Plan] benefits would decrease massively for some of the things that are used the most… For example, maximum drug prescription [per student] would go from $5,000 to $4,000, and mental health visits would go from 20 [visits] fully covered [visits per student]… [to] 15 sessions covered [for $120 maximum each].”

Sindhu added that the Canadian Federation of Students — a national union composed of over 530,000 students from 63 university and college students’ unions across Canada — had secured a “discounted premium” for the SCSU to maintain its Health & Dental Plan, which lowered the increase from 10 to the current six per cent.