Vidya Ramnarine, a fifth-year UTSC student registered with Accessibility Services, had her health coverage caught in limbo for two months as a result of gaps in the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union’s (SCSU) health plan, leading to over $500 in out-of-pocket health expenses and ongoing mental stress. 

Ramnarine is taking two courses this semester — a part-time course load — and is registered with Accessibility Services, meaning she is eligible for coverage under the SCSU Health and Dental policy.

Despite this, in early January, Ramnarine learned that her coverage had been deactivated when she tried unsuccessfully to submit a claim to Greenshield — the health insurance company that the SCSU’s plan uses. She initially thought the deactivation was because it was before the SCSU’s healthcare opt-in forms were due on January 30.

It was only in late February, after multiple students had been left without coverage since January, that SCSU Internal Coordinator Koby Bamfo wrote to the students in an email that “The way insurance is charged to students is based on the course count seen in ACORN… the issue here is that the system isn’t smart [enough] to pick up when a student for example is full-time under AccessAbility [sic] services.”

“In the dark”

Even though Ramnarine was eligible for SCSU coverage, Greenshield did not have access to her disability status on ACORN, so it incorrectly thought that Ramnarine should be covered by the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students’ (APUS) health and dental plan. 

Complicating matters was the fact that the SCSU was unaware of this major gap in its plan. When Ramnarine emailed the union on January 30 asking if she should opt out of APUS coverage, Bamfo told Ramnarine to “hold off” on using her full-time SCSU health plan. In a February 2 email to Ramnarine, Bamfo said he was working with APUS and Greenshield to figure out what she should do, telling her that the issue would “hopefully” be resolved later that week.

It was at this point that Ramnarine realized she would have to pay out-of-pocket for the foreseeable future. In a typical week, Ramnarine — who deals with ongoing mental and physical health issues — can file multiple claims for her various therapies and medication.

“I had a lot of medical bills piling up. So I just needed to know what to do,” Ramnarine said in an interview with The Varsity. Despite the urgency of her situation, Ramnarine had still not heard back from Bamfo by February 9. Growing desperate, she tried calling the SCSU, but no one answered, and she was unable to leave a message because the voicemail inbox was full. When she visited the SCSU office on February 12, she was told that Bamfo would get back to her the next day, but by February 23, Ramnarine still hadn’t heard from him. 

In an email to Bamfo on February 23, in which she CC’d SCSU president Lalise Shifara, Ramnarine wrote: “I currently have outstanding medical expenses awaiting reimbursement and additional necessary expenses that I have delayed due to uncertainty about my coverage status.”

In a responding email, Bamfo told Ramnarine that the problem stemmed from the fact that Greenshield did not recognize her as a full-time student because it “doesn’t see specific cases like the Accessibility office.” Bamfo also acknowledged that Ramnarine was one of a number of students facing the same issue and that he and the union were “trying to tackle it across both APUS and Greenshield.”

When Ramnarine asked when she could expect to have her coverage reinstated, Bamfo wrote that he was “in the dark” about wait times. In an email sent on February 25 to all the students facing this issue, Bamfo wrote, “I’ve been working with APUS to get in contact with the service reps over at the Greenshield insurance company but we don’t have an ETA to provide for when this gets addressed since it looks like the company is undergoing some internal changes and updates to their structure.” 

Ramnarine said that she herself had called Greenshield. “They told me, ‘We don’t handle this. It’s your administrator.’ ” Greenshield did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment. 

It wasn’t until March 4, during the SCSU Executive Candidates’ debate, that Ramnarine and the other students received an email from Bamfo confirming that the issue had been resolved and their SCSU health and dental plan was now active. 

“My health was down the drain”

Ramnarine has ADHD and autism, as well as physical conditions that require ongoing, expensive medical care. “I submit at least a few claims a week. That’s how often I use it,” she said, “I couldn’t even bill anything under [her mother’s insurance] because I technically [was] waiting on Greenshield. So I was just out of pocket, period.”

Financial constraints forced Ramnarine to forgo some routine treatment, adding physical stress to the emotional stress of not having health coverage over January and February. This stress had academic consequences for Ramnarine, a neuroscience and psychology double major. “I had to skip a midterm. Luckily, it got rescheduled, but I had to skip it because [my] physical [and] mental health was down the drain — barely sleeping for two to four hours a night, barely eating one meal a day,” Ramnarine explained. 

“I’m pissed off because there was no apology and no accountability whatsoever [from Bamfo],” she said. “The current [SCSU] administration did not do their job.”

Neither Bamfo nor SCSU Executive Director Sarah Abdillahi responded to The Varsity’s request for comment, but in a March 5 email to Ramnarine, on which The Varsity was CC’d, Abdillahi wrote, “I would… like to sincerely apologize on behalf of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) for not identifying the gaps in our Health & Dental Plan sooner… I spoke with the staff responsible for administering the SCSU’s Health & Dental Plan. I also want to extend an apology on their behalf if any of the responses you received were unclear or unsatisfactory.”

In the same email, Abdillahi wrote, “we are actively working to address this issue and that our members registered with Accessibility Services remain a priority. I will personally ensure we follow up on this matter until a clear and fair solution is reached.”

In the last week, Ramnarine has submitted claims for all the out-of-pocket expenses that accumulated since January, but she remains angry about how the SCSU handled this issue. So is David Ojeifo, a UTSC student and close friend of Ramnarine, who has supported her during the stress of the last two months. 

“The people who are in the current [SCSU] administration that let this happen are also currently running for the current SCSU elections,” Ojeifo said to The Varsity in an interview. “[They’re] ignorant. I don’t think they understand the full scope of their responsibilities as VPs. ”

The SCSU executives did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment.