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Insurance Adding Allure To Marriage

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The New York Times

Published: August 14, 2008

LAKE CHARLES, La. - It was already February when Brandy Brady met Ricky Huggins at a Mardi Gras ball here. By April, they had decided to marry.

Brady says she loves Huggins, but she worries they are moving too fast. She questions how well they really know each other, and wants to better understand his mood swings.

But Brady, 38, also finds much to admire in Huggins, who is three years older. He strikes her as trustworthy and caring. He has a stable job as a plumber, and a house. And perhaps above all, said Brady, who received a kidney transplant last year, "He's got great insurance."

More than romance, the couple readily acknowledge, it is Huggins' Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO policy that is driving their rush to the altar.

In a country where insurance is out of reach for many, it is not uncommon for couples to marry, or even to divorce, at least partly so one spouse can obtain or maintain health coverage.

There is no way to know how often it happens, but lawyers and patient advocacy groups say they see cases regularly.

In a poll conducted this spring by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group, 7 percent of adults said someone in their household had married in the past year to gain access to insurance.

Stephen L.J. Hoffman, an officiant at wedding chapels in Covington, Ky., said he was no longer shocked that one of 10 couples cited health insurance as the reason they stood before him.

"They come in and say, 'We were going to get married anyway, but right now we really need the insurance,'" Hoffman said. "There may be an unplanned pregnancy, or there is an illness, or they've lost their job and can't get insurance."

Though money and matrimony have been linked since Genesis, marrying for health coverage is a more modern convention. For today's couples, "in sickness and in health" may seem less a lover's troth than an actuarial contract. They marry for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for co-pays and deductibles.

Bo and Dena McLain of Milford, Ohio, eloped in March so he could add her to his group policy because her nursing school required proof of insurance.

Corey Marshall and Kim Wetzel, who dated for four years, moved up their wedding plans by a year so she could switch to his policy after her employer raised premiums.

In some instances, the need for insurance may prolong unhappy marriages.

When a mammogram confirmed in April 2007 that Sherri Parish had a lump in her breast, she panicked not only because of the devastating health news, but also because she was two weeks from a court date to finalize her divorce. Across the ups and downs of a 20-year marriage, her husband, Jonathan, had insured her through his job as a construction foreman in Noblesville, Ind.

"It was a devastating time for me," Sherri Parish said. "I wasn't sure what was going to happen with either the prognosis or the financial side."

A nurse and a mother of three, Parish, 47, had had little contact with her husband since they separated a year earlier. Through lawyers, she asked Jonathan Parish, 49, if he would consider a delay so she could pursue treatment. He agreed.

"He didn't want me to be without health care coverage because I'd never had it without him," Sherri Parish said. "He'd always been the breadwinner, and I always worked two or three days a week and raised the children."

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