Should You Marry Someone for Their Health Insurance?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, October 20th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Healthcare has been a hot-button issue during this election season.
How big of a financial burden is health care for American adults?
If you don't have health insurance through your employer, doctors' visits and prescriptions can be a huge expense and cut into savings goals. Some people are making life-changing decisions to make ends meet.
It wasn't necessarily super romantic. I told him I loved him and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. And you should be on my insurance. This would just make more sense.
Our reporter Francesca Fontana will tell her story after the break.
They say you should marry for love, but should you marry for health insurance?
What evidence shows health costs have outpaced wages and raised deductibles?
For many Americans, health care takes a huge bite out of their finances, and young people especially are finding creative ways to reduce that cost, including our own WSJ reporter Francesca Fontana. Francesca, thanks for being with us.
Oh, thank you for having me.
So how big of a burden is health insurance on adults these days?
You know, it's become an increasingly disproportionate burden. And it was interesting, I spoke to folks at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, and they found that health spending by families with large employer health plans has on average increased two times faster than workers' wages over the past decade. So, you know, we've seen the growth of healthcare costs has outpaced wage growth and the growth of prices in the general economy. And, you know, a big part of that has been that so many costs have been pushed onto employees in the form of deductibles, which, you know, if you're living on paycheck to paycheck can be a huge amount to cover in the event of an emergency. and can make healthcare increasingly unaffordable.
What was Francesca and her partner's health coverage situation before marriage?
And there was also a Federal Reserve survey that found that in 2019, about 18% of adults had unpaid debt from their own medical care or medical care that, you know, a family member had had. And about 25% of adults skipped medical care because they were unable to afford the cost. So clearly, you know, and I know this from my own experience, but clearly this is a a big financial burden for so many Americans.
So health insurance actually played a pretty big role in your personal life. What was the health coverage arrangement between you and your husband before you got married?
So I get my health insurance through the journal and he had an interesting arrangement. So he has worked for an esteemed artist in Manhattan for, gosh, I think over a decade. And, you know, it's been a great job for him. He's an artist and a sculptor as well, but it never included benefits like health insurance. So he has always paid for that out of pocket.
Why did Francesca propose and frame marriage around adding her husband to her insurance?
And through the marketplace, the cost is varied year to year. So my healthcare costs, once I started working full-time as a journalist, were very standard and I could expect them. And his were a little less predictable. And because he has an autoimmune disease, you know, and chronic health conditions, they you know we found that his costs became pretty exorbitant in you know the the first few years we were dating um the blind share of his income was going towards all of these health expenses from his monthly premium to the weekly specialist visits and and all those things and it really added up and i was fortunate enough to have insurance where I, you know, the costs were manageable and for him it wasn't.
And that was a pretty stark difference between our situations.
And that actually propelled you to propose to him. Take us through how that day went.
So it wasn't your typical proposal. We were just having a weekend morning where he was going through all of his bills and invoices from all of his different doctors and specialists, and he was crunching the numbers to see what the next year would hold in terms of how much his healthcare was going to cost. He was trying to plan out his budget. And, you know, he'd figured out that in 2020, this was in 2019, that in 2020, he'd be spending more than $1,000 a month on healthcare.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:13
2
How big of a financial burden is health care for American adults?
0:13–0:50
3
What evidence shows health costs have outpaced wages and raised deductibles?
0:50–1:57
4
What was Francesca and her partner's health coverage situation before marriage?
1:57–2:59
5
Why did Francesca propose and frame marriage around adding her husband to her insurance?
2:59–4:32
6
How did the proposal conversation play out and what practical factors were discussed?
4:32–6:07
7
What personal experience did Francesca share about medical debt and its impact?
6:07–9:54
8
How have other couples used marriage to solve insurance problems and what lessons emerged?
9:54–10:57
Speakers
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