Issues with Student Loans, Wage Quality and Health Care
Student Loans
Student loan is a tool used by government in collaboration with education sector to promote access to education. However, there is several challenges students face. As an undergraduate student, I have encountered the following challenges regarding loans.
Delays in disbursement. One of the biggest challenge regarding student loans is delay in disbursement. It takes a lot of time before the loan gets to student. Personally, I have experienced such delays before the loan reaches both my personal account and school’s account. The ambiguity of the financial aid process and the disbursement dates caused strain in my school life since I depended upon the aid to pay the fee, rent, transportation and other living expenses.Course registration and unit registration was delayed several times. In addition, I have experienced disbursement delay due to application errors. This caused holdups in form processing and verification of information. It took time to correct the errors and thereafter receive the financial aid. Another factor attributable to delays is that financial aids offices have few staff members who process forms for thousands of student.
Eligibility and procedural issues. Financial aid offices have very strict procedural and eligibility issues. The criterion for financial aid is disadvantageous for both dependent and independent students. As an independent student I had to document unique and unusual family circumstances. I had to provide a valid proof regarding the family status in order to receive the funding to finance my university attendance.
Wage quality
Many workers face tough times due to deteriorating quality of job and stagnant wages. As a worker, I have experienced several worth noting challenges regarding the wage.
Low wages. Too many deductions which are made on the wages. Health insurance policies provides for deduction of a certain amount of money to cater for health needs of the individual. Health insurance policies lack clear mechanisms to follow when deducting the monthly health package contributions. There should be different deductions according to categories of job group with different wages. People earning low wages should be deducted low amount of money. On my merger wage, several deductions were made that included the health package, government tax and other social security fund. These deductions made great implication on what I received to my end.
Losing contract. Since most of the time the work was on contract basis, there was a time that I could lose the whole contract. At times, the purchaser decision had great impact on the wages. Partial payments were to be made to not fully implemented task. Short notices regarding a halt to a contract greatly contributed towards my wage. Lastly, I also experienced delay between verification and disbursement. I had to source other means for a living before I could receive the payments.
Health care
Health care is a package of maintaining health through diagnosis, curing and preventing diseases and impairments. Health care involves provision of primary care (prevention), secondary care (treatment) and tertiary care (rehabilitation services). It’s in this perspective that any deviation in the provision of the health care package results to negligence. Health care sector is faced with a lot of challenges that directly affect patient. Some of the challenges i have faced in the health care sector includes:
Long waiting hours. Patient in government hospitals spend a lot of time waiting at the outpatient department. This is brought about by long queues. This has never been different to me. I had to wait for long hours before I could receive the services. In addition, I had to wait for more hours for the results of some laboratory test. A strategy needs to be implemented to reduce long waiting hours and the long queues in order to improve customer satisfaction.
Out-of- pocket payment. Health insurances package needs to cater for both outpatient and inpatient services. As an active contributor to health insurance, I had to pay out of my pocket for outpatient services. Health insurances only covered the inpatient services. This was a challenge in accessing outpatient services since I had to dig deep in my pocket yet I had to make monthly contribution to the health insurance providers.