And, as the Gazette also reports, the Campaign is still going on. Not all the potential donors have been tapped; not all the projects in the original list have been fully funded. Look for a major newspaper advertisement from UW in the next few days, trumpeting the Campaign's success and reminding Waterloo's many friends that the university still has needs they can help to meet.
Among the changes is one that affects the way the health plan pays for prescription drugs and other "eligible medical expenses", such as the fees of physiotherapists and other paramedical services. The current health plan has a "deductible", $43 for a single person and $86 for a family, meaning that the individual pays the first $43 or $86 of medical costs each year and then the health plan pays the rest.
The proposal (it comes from the UW pension and benefits committee) is to replace the "deductible" system with a "co-insurance" system, by which the individual pays 20 per cent of medical costs and the health plan pays 80 per cent. The individual's payment would be limited by a "cap", however: $100 single, $200 family.
There's been some confusion about what the cap means. David Dietrich of the human resources department provides the answer: "Once the member's share reaches $100/$200 single/family in a calendar year the plan pays 100% of costs up to any applicable maxima. Therefore the eligible medical costs would have to be $500/$1,000 before the cap was met. The same cap applies to both eligible drugs and eligible other medical expenses, not just total drug costs."
The information meetings about the proposed changes are happening this Friday at 8:30 a.m., 12 noon, and 6 p.m., and next Thursday (June 22) at 8:30 a.m. They're all in Needles Hall room 3001.
Ulrich Plenzdorf's "Die Leiden des jungen W.", the 1995 production of the German Drama Group, will hit the stage tomorrow through Saturday at 8 p.m. in Humanities room 373. Tickets are $5 (students $3) from the Germanic and Slavic department at ext. 2260.
Oh, and birthday greetings to John Holmes in the department of psychology.
Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca