Catholic Health System Give Benefits to Fornicator and Sodomite 'Partners'
Catholic Health System Give Benefits to Fornicator and Sodomite 'Partners'
PeaceHealth extends health care
benefits to household partners
By Tim Christie
The Register-Guard
PeaceHealth, the Catholic-sponsored health system that owns Sacred Heart and five other hospitals in the Northwest as well as the Eugene-based PeaceHealth Medical Group, is following a trend steadily gaining ground in corporate America, as well as among government agencies and universities.
When Kate Hill, a psychiatric social worker at Sacred Heart Medical Center, first tried to enroll her partner of 23 years in the company health insurance plan, she was told: Sorry, you need a valid marriage license.
So last March, after Multnomah County began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex partners, Hill and Jennifer Meyer drove to Portland and got married. When Hill, marriage license in hand, again asked Sacred Heart to insure her partner, she was told: Sorry, we'll have to run this one by the lawyers.
But starting in January, Meyer will be covered by Hill's insurance because Sacred Heart's corporate parent has decided to offer insurance to employees' domestic partners - or any other adult in the household.
But where most employers that extend health benefits are offering them only to employees' domestic partners, PeaceHealth's policy takes it a step further by offering insurance to any one adult member of an employee's household, whether a gay or opposite-sex partner, a parent, adult child or sibling.
PeaceHealth leaders took up the issue after employees asked about extending benefits, spokesman Brian Terrett said, and reached a decision after 2 1/2 years of a painstaking "ethical discernment process."
"It's a mission-driven decision," said Sister Kathleen Pruitt, vice president of mission and spirituality for PeaceHealth. "PeaceHealth as a (health) system can't save the whole world, but we can certainly extend benefits to our employees to take the burden of health care and give them some sense of ease and relief."
Extending health benefits to include same-sex partners was not a difficult decision, nor does it conflict with church doctrine, she said.
"We're not making a moral comment on any lifestyle," she said.
While voters in 11 states, including Oregon, passed ballot measures last month to ban gay marriage, the move to extend health benefits to unmarried partners has been steadily gaining steam in corporate America in recent years.
About two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies now offer domestic partner benefits, said Ilse de Veer, a senior benefits consultant with Mercer Human Resource Consulting in Norwalk, Conn.
"They've decided that, first of all, from a total cost perspective, it's not a particularly expensive benefit," she said. "It sends a message of inclusion and diversity."
It also helps companies to retain and recruit talent, she said, and allows them to comply with contracting ordinances adopted by cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles.
Companies that extend benefits beyond domestic partners are less common, but more are starting to do so, she said. Some companies decided broader eligibility would take the spotlight off the potentially controversial issue of domestic partnership benefits, she said.
The Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay and lesbian advocacy group in the country, keeps track of employers that offer domestic partner benefits, but not those that extend benefits to any adult living with an employee.
"It achieves the same objective as providing domestic partner benefits," said Darryl Herrschaft, deputy director for the Human Rights Campaign's workplace project. "It is more inclusive, and it meets the goal of providing a safety net for employees who may have an uninsured partner at home so they can focus more of their attention on their jobs."
The fact that so many big corporations are doing it - an average of 25 Fortune 500 companies have extended benefits each of the past four years - is evidence that the policy makes good business sense, regardless of the politics around gay marriage, Herrschaft said.
"Companies are making these decisions, making these commitments to diversity, independent of what is going on in the political arena," he said. "They're making their decisions based on business principles, and those principles haven't changed since Nov. 2."
In Oregon, Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas and The Oregonian are among companies that offer domestic partner benefits. In Eugene, Obie Media Corp. and Microniche, a small software company, offer such benefits. In the public sector, the cities of Eugene, Corvallis and Portland and Multnomah County cover domestic partnership benefits, as do the University of Oregon, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University and Southern Oregon University.
McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield does not offer extended benefits to employees, spokeswoman Rosie Pryor said. She said the hospital has considered it in the past and could consider it in the future.
Of the 8,200 PeaceHealth employees systemwide who are eligible to extend their health benefits, so far 265 have done so. In Oregon, 148 employees, out of 3,633 eligible, have insured domestic partners or others.
PeaceHealth has set fairly strict criteria for extending benefits. To be eligible, a person must be a member of the household and share a "close personal relationship" with the employee; share the home as a principle resident for at least a year prior to enrollment; and be over 18. Nannies or other employees are not eligible, nor are adults who have access to other medical coverage, including Medicare.
Mitch Temple gets no health benefits as manager of the Perugino coffee bar in downtown Eugene, but starting in January, he'll be covered since he lives with his partner, PeaceHealth nurse-practitioner Phyllis Roberts.
"It's already set my mind at ease," he said. "It really makes working there dramatically more attractive if one's mate is included, regardless of whether the employee is married to that mate."
But not everyone is so elated by the new policy.
Hill, 47, and Meyer, 50, have decidedly mixed feelings about the extension of benefits. The couple have been together 23 years and have two children, ages 21 and 17.
While PeaceHealth was making up its mind about the new policy, Meyer lost her job as a technical writer - and her benefits - and the couple had to pay $500 a month for COBRA, a federal transitional insurance program.
"For me it's a little bit too little too late," Hill said. "I feel a little grumpy after spending thousands and thousands on COBRA. I'm frustrated, and I'm grateful."
"Maybe its a very diplomatic compromise," Meyer said, "but it doesn't give us the exact rights of married couples."
For instance, while a husband and wife who work for different employers can double up their insurance coverage by adding each other to their plans, that's not possible under PeaceHealth policy, they said.
Meyer said she, too, is grateful that more people will be covered, but suggested PeaceHealth leaders may have been squeamish about the domestic partner issue, so they expanded coverage to include other adults to avoid controversy.
"I guess what I resent is that it just completely doesn't acknowledge the fact that Kate and I have a marriage-like commitment," she said.
Posted by Editor at December 14, 2004 05:13 PM
