Health insurance has been a big buzz on campus so far this fall. With a new coverage plan, the college requires that a student either have proof of health insurance or be automatically enrolled in the new plan with Aetna Student Health.

We’d like to applaud the college on their concern for the health and well-being of the entire student body. Students that previously didn’t have health care coverage through their job or their parents are now covered.

But was it really necessary to make such a huge change? By estimates from Dean Thorius, only four percent of Simpson students were not covered by health insurance and were automatically enrolled in the college’s previous plan. Was four percent really worth making a campus-wide change?

The college shouldn’t play the role of telling people they should or should not have health insurance. Forcing every student on campus to be covered by a plan that costs $900 per year is a bit ridiculous. It’s not fair to those students that weren’t previously covered by insurance that they be forced to pay such a high amount for something that they may not even need.

There have also been some issues with the new policy, such as how to sign up. Students were given until the end of August to either provide proof of another insurance plan or sign up for the new plan. The process was online and was definitely far from crystal clear. The diagrams on the Web site of example insurance cards were confusing and sometimes didn’t match any cards for existing providers. Required information fields had different names.

So thank you, Simpson College, for caring. But next time, could you make it a bit easier on the students?