Beginning autumn quarter 2003, Ohio State students enrolled for six or more credits will be required to have health insurance. Students can use their own plans, plans offered by parents’ employers or Ohio State’s Student Health Insurance Plan, which costs $287 per quarter.

This requirement was added because Ohio State estimated 10 percent of students did not have adequate health coverage, and the lack of insurance was causing higher drop-out rates because of medical problems and related costs.

OSU is promoting the Student Health Insurance Plan because the coverage offered by other plans often has many stipulations like not providing insurance outside a certain area, or only covering life-threatening illness or injury.

The university shows a cruel position on this issue. Requiring students to carry insurance raises an interesting question: would OSU refuse treatment to an uninsured patient?Making this change leaves one to assume that if a bleeding, dying person came to OSU Hospital in need of help, they would turn them away to expire in the streets. In forcing health insurance, OSU declares an inhuman and business-first stance toward human life.

This new policy is similar to an infamous and oft-complained-about Ohio law — every Ohioan who drives, by law, must carry a certain amount of car insurance. It follows in the car insurance law’s footsteps — it was enacted for the welfare of the citizens (or in this case, students) beneath the umbrella of the institution.

But the car insurance law is much like laws prohibiting smoking. Anti-smoking laws, while they come at the cost of some people (in this case, the loss of a leisure activity), are enacted for the general health benefit of anyone who would have harm forced upon them by second-hand smoke. While car insurance harms many people — imposing extra costs upon people who don’t have the money to afford insurance, as well as never benefiting those who don’t get in accidents — it does and will aid anyone who gets in an accident, including other people who did or did not choose to carry insurance.

While health insurance benefits everyone, lack of coverage comes only at the risk of the individual and no one else. Forcing anybody to carry a certain amount of insurance for themselves is like forcing people to eat things that are healthy — yet at this point, there are no plans to require all OSU students to ingest their daily amount of vitamins — because while suggestions can be made to people about their health, we cannot make it illegal for people to be unhealthy.

When a student does not have health insurance, it harms only the student. But there are people who cannot afford coverage, and others who simply don’t believe they will need it, opting to forgo the additional expense. So while health insurance is completely for the benefit of those under it, OSU should not be able to force it upon anyone seeking an education.

Until individual health is something state and federal law feels it should mandate, university law regulating it is little more than preaching morals — what the university thinks everyone should do.