This is not a joke.  A woman in California is going through the same crisis a lot of Americans are at this time: she will soon be without health insurance.  While the government scrambles to pass a socialized medicine bill past conservatives who equate ‘socialized’ with ‘fascist’, people are getting sick, suffering, and even dying.  One woman, whose COBRA policy from her previous marriage will run out this year, is looking for someone to put a wedding ring on her finger—as long as he has health coverage. 

45-year-old Terri Carlson is an attractive, energetic, funny mother who was diagnosed with a condition that has rendered her “ineligible for life” with all of the insurance companies she has contacted.  This C4 Complement Deficiency manifests much like lupus, affecting her immune system.  She has no realistic health care option except to marry someone with good coverage and a low co-pay.  In one of her now-famous youtube videos, she says that she could move to Canada, but she really can’t because she already owns her home in Vista, California.  She also jokes that she could commit a crime and get sent to jail, where she would then get three meals a day, health insurance, and could work out whenever she wants, so she’d be in great shape.  It’s good that she maintains her sense of humor in a situation that is far from funny.

We’ve heard of marrying for citizenship or marrying for money, but marrying for the right to stay alive?  This is new.  And Terri Carlson is determined, having set up the website willmarryforhealthinsurance.com.  Although she is heterosexual, she is also willing to marry a woman—again, as long as that person’s health benefits cover her as well.  Ideally, she has said, she’d like to find a wonderful guy she’d marry anyway, but right now she is desperate, and as she told CBS News: “The lower the co-pay, she sexier you are to me”. 

She has already received thousands and thousands of responses, but is still looking for the best choice.  Is this really what marriage should be about?  No. But for Terri Carlson, life is more important than love.  Her plight brought out stories of people who have married for insurance, but they were all already planning to wed, just not as quickly as they eventually did.  Their reasons for speeding up the wedding plans were all the same: health insurance.  In a few cases, friends married and re-defined “friends with benefits”.  These are the measures people take to stay healthy.  Alison Johnson and Justus Addiss, partners for more than 30 years, finally got married not because they felt the need to be married, but because her health insurance became too expensive.  She summed it up by saying, “With over 1,000 laws giving married couples rights that unmarried couples don’t have, it’s hard to stay unmarried, especially as we age.”

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