<p>They raised student fees. Not tuition, but still stuff we pay. </p>
<p>And biology didn’t get anything wrong…</p>
<p>Patriotsfan, many trans people feel as if they are a man in a woman’s body or a woman in a man’s body. Essentially, their gender and their sex do not match. This is a mistake of biology. One that trans people often wish to fix to the best of their ability.</p>
<p>Serenity, you fail to recognize that human health and even lives have a price. I wouldn’t pay $100,000 to cure someone’s depression. That’s a big waste of society’s resources. I’d let them live depressed lives at that cost. If it’s $500 for depression medication, that’s something I would likely support.</p>
<p>Serenity, I think that it is more of a mental problem. Some people don’t feel like they have the right gender, just like one person had an overwhelming urge to chop his leg off (saw it on a show once, and he did).</p>
<p>Done trying to explain trans people to cis people who aren’t open-minded. You won’t get it. Duke did the right thing. It won’t cost much. Get over it. The fee would have gone up anyway. This just helps promote an air of tolerance the school should be commended for.</p>
<p>The point isn’t if you agree with people getting the surgery done or not. The point is that Duke is making people pay for that person’s surgery. It’s not how much or how little, but the principle of it. Why should they get preferential treatment when there are plenty of other people who don’t have the same luxury even though they may actually have a disease that is killing them. If we go down this line where does it end. By your logic the cost should go up exponentially for homeless, starving kids, people with disease, cancer, etc. The only difference is that those are actually life threatening ailments, not just something in their head.</p>
<p>The purpose of college is to get an education, not a sex change.</p>
<p>Tuition or fees, it doesn’t matter. It is still going to same place - the school. They could charge you $40,000 for the book and give away the education for free. Or, have mandatory room and board, and charge $50,000 for the room and have $0 tuition.</p>
<p>Again, you all need to read the Duke Today press statement carefully. Here it is: [Duke</a> Responds to Reports on Gender Reassignment Surgery | Duke Today](<a href=“http://today.duke.edu/2013/05/studenthealthstatement]Duke”>Duke Responds to Reports on Gender Reassignment Surgery | Duke Today). Duke students only pay for it if they choose the Duke student health insurance plan. While health insurance is mandatory for all students, you do not have to get your health insurance through Duke. If students are under their parent’s health insurance plan or choose an alternative plan, then they are not paying for it. If it really is an issue for any of you, then avoid Duke’s student health plan. Seriously, it amazes me that false information is being thrown around this forum even after it was pointed out that it was inaccurate information. Read carefully and think critically.</p>
<p>^Slik nik, what percentage of Duke students are on that health insurance plan? I’d imagine it is almost all of them, though I can’t find any such data on Duke’s website. Looking around Google, Duke’s annual health insurance cost appears to be lower than that of other providers in the USA. Given this, your argument seems preposterous to me. An analogous argument is one American telling another who wants to enact gun restrictions that he should move to Sweden if he doesn’t like the laws here. Perhaps it’s your critical thinking skills that are lacking.</p>
<p>It’s adding something to the Health plan. Nothing more. It increases the Health fee a slight amount. Wow. Get over it. It’s not like they’re doubling the price.</p>
<p>Serenity, you only look at it as the cost to each person and say “no big deal.” Would it be okay if the US government taxed every person $1.00 to build the president a $300M mansion in California? It’s only $1.00 though, right? No sweat.</p>
<p>I don’t have records to back this up, but when I was at Blue Devil Days at Duke, I asked a rep from the health center, and she informed me that approximately 80% of Duke students are on their parents’ health insurance plans.</p>
<p>This is 100% the wrong thing to do. Transgender people are wrong, it’s going a step further than just being gay. In my eyes, being gay is fine and “natural”, however, being transgender is wrong because you want to change the way you were created.</p>
<p>Ok, let’s do the math. Duke has 14591 students. Let’s assume that they are all on the plan. $5.00 * 14591 = $72955. How many surgeries will this pay for? Two?</p>
<p>yeah normal people, check ur cis privledge. gosh!</p>
<p>@orion22</p>
<p>And considering most poeple aren’t on the plan, thats even less.</p>
<p>If most people aren’t on the plan, I don’t see how an additional $5.00 fee will raise enough revenue to pay for ONE surgery. The arithmetic isn’t there.</p>
<p>Duke’s student health insurance doesn’t exist in a vaccumn-- it was probably upped in some part of a master formula that the insurance company uses (Blue Cross North Carolina, or something to that effect).</p>
<p>Orion, a mansion is a luxury. This surgery saves lives.</p>
<p>I feel compelled to point out that while this surgery may save lives, it is not the ONLY course of treatment that can save lives. A better question is whether this surgery is the current standard of care. If yes, then insurance should cover it. If not, then what is and how efficacious is it compared with sex reassignment surgery and also what are the cost differences?</p>
<p>Let’s assume that only 20% of the students are on the Duke health plan. Guess what? 100% of the people who want the surgery will be on the Duke health plan (the students in the 80% will get on the plan for 1 term to get the surgery). Those 20% will pay for the surgery of 100% of the students that want the surgery, regardless of whether those students were in the 20% or not.</p>