The Wall Street Journal’s health blog skeptically examines a Kaiser study that suggests it is increasingly common for couples to marry mainly so that one spouse could gain eligibility for the other’s health insurance.

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Will You Marry Me for

Health Insurance?

Seven percent of Americans said that in
the past year they or someone in their household decided to tie the
knot mainly so one spouse would be eligible for the other’s health
coverage.

That astonishing figure came from a survey out today from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit group that looks at health policy issues.

Is marrying for health-care convenience the new marrying to get a Green Card? After we took a look at the math, we weren’t so sure. Here’s why.

There are 114 million households in America,according to the Census Bureau.
So the Kaiser survey suggests that in 7% of those households — about
eight million total — someone decided to get married in the past year
mainly because of health benefits.

But the total number of marriages in 2005, the most recent year for
which complete national figures are available, is only 2.25 million, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
That puts the total number of people who get hitched — for love, for
money, for health insurance, for whatever — at about 4.5 million
annually.

It’s tricky to make a precise jump from “households” to individual
people or marriages, but it’s clear that the numbers don’t add up,
Mollyann Brodie, the foundation’s vice president for public opinion
research, told the Health Blog. She suggested people may have
interpreted the question more broadly both in terms of time (beyond the
past year) and space (beyond their immediate household).

“What people are good at reporting is their perception,” she said.
“The broad implication is the cost of health care is important enough
that benefits are part of peoples’ life decisions.”

Topics: The Uninsured |

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