UB students research cancer at Roswell Park. But they struggle to afford health insurance

Emily Isenhart is wrapping up a project focused on developing a novel treatment for Ewing sarcoma, a bone cancer that affects children and young adults.

Stephen Goralski is researching how a person’s age affects the ability of tumors to produce new blood vessels.

Even as they work in the high-stakes, competitive world of cancer research, Isenhart and Goralski for the last two years have found themselves with something more immediate and personal to worry about: Their own struggles to afford health insurance.

Isenhart and Goralski are two of about 80 Ph.D. students in the Roswell Park Graduate Division of the University at Buffalo. Those in the division are students at UB, but are paid an annual stipend of around $34,000 by Roswell Park.

UB two years ago discontinued its health insurance plan for domestic students, which has left students in the division annually scrambling to secure an affordable health insurance plan. New York State’s expanded Essential Plan provided them with a temporary solution, but that plan was scaled back July 1 due to federal funding cuts.

“We want to be worried about, ‘How do we get this novel medication into clinical trials?’ Not, ‘How am I going to be able to afford my medicine?’ ” said Goralski, 29, who recently completed his second year in the program and his qualifying exam.

The situation is complicated. In a statement, UB said the students have no employment relationship with the university and are part-time employees of Roswell Park who are not eligible for health insurance coverage through the cancer center.

UB said it is “actively engaged” with the students to discuss their concerns about eligibility and access to health insurance.

“Despite these complications, the university is exploring what health insurance it can offer these students to meet their needs,” UB said. “Such coverage would be similar to student plans that the university made available prior to 2024 and options that the university makes available to certain special classifications of students, such as medical students and student athletes.”

In a brief statement, Roswell Park said it is “pleased that these conversations are advancing.”

But while UB has made statements about potentially offering health insurance in recent months, the students in early August said they have received no status updates or details of such a plan. They’ve all enrolled in marketplace plans for now, but those aren’t easy to afford, and some come with high deductibles that mean students will try to go without care.

“It's not just people who have cancer who are affected by cancer – it's their entire networks, it's their coworkers and families and friends and neighbors – and it means a lot to me to try to improve that, even marginally,” Isenhart said. “So to be doing that and then get left behind in your own ability to have healthcare is kind of personally devastating.”

How this started

UB announced in November 2023 it would no longer require health insurance for domestic students as of fall 2024, and that it was discontinuing the university-sponsored insurance plan offered to them at the end of the policy year on July 31, 2024.

UB said fewer than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in the university-sponsored plan that would be discontinued, down from more than 4,000 enrollees at the plan’s height. The decrease in enrollees, the university said, increased the plan cost and the prices of covered health care services.

“Given the availability of alternative options in the marketplace, the university is confident that students’ well-being should not be negatively impacted,” UB told The Buffalo News in November 2023.

UB said it received “very few inquiries” from students about the change and worked on case-by-case basis to help students select a new plan. While policies changed for domestic students, SUNY policy requires all international students to be enrolled in a health plan.

Essential Plan offers a bridge

In March 2024, the federal government approved a waiver that allowed New York State to expand the Essential Plan to New Yorkers with incomes between 200% and 250% of the federal poverty level.

About 450,000 people, including the affected students, gained access to $0-premium, low-cost-sharing health coverage.

“We also knew that was likely to be a temporary solution,” Isenhart said.

Knowing this, the students lobbied Roswell Park and were able to get their annual stipend increased from $31,000 to $34,000, Isenhart said.

Their urgency picked up last summer. Last year's federal reconciliation bill, or H.R.1, was signed into law in July 2025 and “eliminated premium tax credit eligibility for most lawfully present immigrants that made the expanded Essential Plan financially viable for New York,” according to the state Health Department.

With that funding cut in H.R.1., New York State said it was unable to continue offering the expanded Essential Plan to those earning 200% to 250% of the federal poverty level, which is $31,920 to $39,900, as of July 1, 2026.

Goralski said students received that notification in fall 2025, an expected, but difficult, outcome to stomach.

“There was this kind of big panic because while the raises that we had received had been generous, inflation has been going through the roof and things are still unaffordable,” he said.

As of July 1, the students were among the thousands who lost access to the Essential Plan and became eligible for qualified health plans in the marketplace that come with higher premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.

Goralski said all of the UB students in the Roswell Park Graduate Division have now enrolled in marketplace plans. Most students, he said, have plans that cost about $200 to $300 a month, though many have high deductibles that make them difficult to use.

Even in a metro area as affordable as Buffalo, a living wage for a single adult working full time is $22.93 an hour, or about $47,700 annually, according to data from the Living Wage Institute.

While the annual stipend for students in the Roswell Park Graduate Division will rise to $35,000 in September, they have year-round research commitments and sign contracts that state they won’t take other jobs, Isenhart and Goralski said. That makes it difficult to supplement their income.

“Before the cost of health insurance, our grad student population is still barely breaking even,” Goralski said.

Potential solutions

While the students are covered now, they want to figure out a long-term solution in the next several months that means they won’t have to regularly evaluate health insurance options in the marketplace.

“We want to just have a stable solution,” Goralski said.

One option is UB again offering coverage that is similar to student plans it made available to domestic students prior to 2024.

Another option that the students have floated is the possibility of joining the Graduate Student Employees Union, which represents graduate assistants and teaching assistants and has access to health insurance through the New York State Health Insurance Program.

To do that, UB would need to facilitate title changes for the students in the Roswell Park Graduate Division to make them eligible for the union.

“GSEU membership is limited to university employees,” UB said. “Because these students are employees of Roswell Park and not the university, they are not eligible to join GSEU or access its insurance plans.”

‘Develop the next generation’

As they’ve pushed for a long-term solution, the students have constantly heard that their health insurance struggle is just a temporary condition. Eventually, they’ll move on to jobs with full salaries and benefits.

Isenhart, 28, is in her seventh year in the program and is due to graduate in spring 2027. She’ll next be pursuing a postdoctoral position, with the goal of one day landing a faculty position with her own lab.

To get this far, she has kept her budget tight and has taken out loans, but also has relied on others to help support her. She stressed that not every person has a support system to lean on, which is why it is important that students have a equitable health insurance solution. Without it, she said, that could prevent some people from pursuing careers in cancer research.

Goralski, so far, has been able to supplement his stipend with savings from a prior job with a Baltimore biotech company, but that money won’t last forever.

Isenhart and Goralski both have personal reasons for pursing cancer research.

In high school, Isenhart was able to visit and volunteer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where she interacted with young patients and felt compelled to pursue science and research. She’s passionate about ensuring that pediatric patients are getting the best treatment options and care.

Goralski knew he wanted to pursue a biology career, but didn’t have more direction than that until his uncle was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. After his uncle died in 2019, Goralski was galvanized to pursue cancer research, where he could indulge his intellectual curiosity in a way that could help people.

“Without graduate students that are able to fully dedicate themselves to their research,” Goralski said, “that massively impacts the ability of us to develop the next generation of cancer treatments.”

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