I did. Seriously. Read more.
A recent series of episodes on Grey's Anatomy confronts the question of access to healthcare. A patient named Henry has a terminal condition that requires life-saving surgery, but he has no health insurance. He will die without the surgery. His surgeon, Teddy Altman (yes, female) offers to marry him because she has great medical insurance, and the insurance will allow for the surgery that will save his life.
So they marry in a civil ceremony - and Henry undergoes his surgery. Of course, problems ensue...
So let's take a ride in the Way-Back Machine...
In 2006, after being post-divorce single for 18 years(!), I met Butch - a wonderful man. Just a few months into our relationship, he asked me to marry him. I knew I loved him. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But get married? That thought had never crossed my mind. We were both in our 50s, kids were grown - why not just live together?
And then we crunched the numbers. Butch is retired from the Air Force and has great, inexpensive health insurance. I was self-employed and had lousy, expensive health insurance.
So we eloped three weeks later.
And in one year, we saved more than $6,000 - enough to buy plane tickets for all our kids and grandkids to come to visit a year later - to have a proper wedding and celebration.
Granted, there's a big difference between Teddy and Henry, and Butch and me. Butch and I were madly in love, and remain so to this day. Getting married has been a wonderful experience for us both. But Teddy and Henry barely knew each other (which is what creates problems in subsequent episodes.)
I've heard of families breaking up over medical debt - even divorcing to protect their assets. I've heard of couples who stay married because one has a chronic disease and the other has the health insurance. I've heard that people take jobs or stay in jobs they hate - because health insurance is a benefit of that job. I've even heard of people breaking the law intentionally so they will go to prison after a cancer diagnosis - where they'll be able to get the treatment they need.
In 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation released study results which showed that 7% of people had a family member who had married for health insurance. It's a fact of life in a country where we have a for-profit based system.
What lengths would you go to, to get the health coverage you need? Truth is - it's hard to say unless you've been in that desperate position. I KNEW the problems I could have with lousy insurance - I had already suffered through them and lost all my savings once before.
You do whatchew gotta do.
What about you? Would you marry for health insurance?
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I wouldn’t marry, but I stayed in a job I didn’t like to make sure that I and my family had adequate coverage. My daughter had a trach and mic-key button feeding tube and I have Young-Onset Parkinson’s Disease (and you thought you had problems). I was not happy with what I was doing and wanted to move to a company where I’d have more opportunities, but I could not risk getting reduced health care or leaving a company and starting at the bottom of the seniority rung. Therefore, I stayed in my job until I found a better one in the same company.
Another point, is my daughter gets a number of services through the state, and we could not risk moving closer to family out-of-state. We did not want to go through the long waiting process of reapplying and hoping we get those same services in another state, especially since we did not even know if those services would be available.
So this is where my gay friends get really upset about not having the option to legally marry for benefits like insurance and where I as a single person think that it shouldn’t depend on whether you’re lucky enough to find love as to whether you can have good health insurance.
I haven’t married for health insurance, but I work part-time at a minimum wage job that allows me to have health insurance through a substidized program. if I worked full-time I would make to much to get substidized health care. And with my medical conditions i am not eligable for “regular” health insurance.