Women Lose Healthcare After Divorce

 Posted on November 29, 2012 in Divorce

A University of Michigan report recently released and reported on in U.S. News and World Report found that after divorce a whopping 115,000 women in the U.S. lose their healthcare every year. Gridget Lavelle, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy and sociology said in a news release that, “given that approximately 1 million divorces occur each year in the U.S., and that many women get health coverage through their husbands, the impact is quite substantial.” As if getting a divorce wasn’t worry enough. Lavelle and her colleagues found that 65,000 of the 115,000 women lose all healthcare coverage in the immediate months following a divorce “because they no longer qualify as dependents under their husbands’ health insurance plans.” Several women, of course, have their own employer-based coverage, and these women are obviously better off, but not immune. According to the data, if 17 percent of all women lose coverage after a divorce, only 11 percent of women with their own healthcare coverage have it denied after divorce. “Women in moderate-income families face the greatest loss of insurance coverage,” Lavelle told the U.S. News and World Report. Though divorced women “often experience financial hardship,” they’re often not eligible for Medicaid or other public insurance. This will change as the health care reform, commonly called “Obamacare” is implemented in 2014, because the new law will expand coverage. When this happens, it will hopefully allow for a greater number of women to retain their health insurance after going through a divorce. Retaining healthcare is only one of the many complicated processes and decisions a person going through divorce must consider. Don’t do it alone. Contact a dedicated Illinois divorce attorney today. Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net