Push for domestic partner benefits is personal for advocates

Push for domestic partner benefits is personal for advocates
By Becky Yerak
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
August 9, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-same-sex-benefits-aug09,0,393574.story


In 1996, 30-year-old Michael McRaith got a phone call that haunts him to this day. His partner of two years, he learned, had taken his own life.

"He had lost his job and did not have access to health insurance, and he was suffering through the trauma that many people do when they're without employment and fighting depression," McRaith recalled.

More than a decade later, the lanky 43-year-old is director of the Illinois Department of Insurance and is one of two members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners leading a new push to raise awareness for domestic partner benefits, partly by discussing their personal experiences.

The other is Mary Jo Hudson, director of the Ohio Department of Insurance. That state doesn't have domestic partner benefits for state workers, which has implications for Hudson, 46, and her partner of eight years, who is nearing the age of Medicare eligibility.

"Fortunately, my partner is still working, but as we try to make plans for the future, and she's a little closer to retirement than I am, it's an issue," said Hudson, who was the first openly gay City of Columbus council member. "Do I need to get a different job that has domestic partner benefits? Does she work longer?"

Nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 firms offer domestic partner benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobbying group. And a study last year by the Families & Work Institute found domestic partner benefits were becoming more prevalent.

Still, individuals are falling through the cracks.

A July 30 report by a Minnesota gay rights group found that one in five gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people lack health insurance, compared with 7 percent of heterosexual Minnesotans. An April 2008 national survey by Harris Interactive found that nearly one in four gay and lesbian adults lack health insurance and are nearly twice as likely as heterosexuals to have no health insurance coverage.

According to the 2007-08 "State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans," released in February by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 15 states offered partner benefits in 2008, up from 10 in 2003.

President Barack Obama has proposed granting such benefits to federal workers.

Illinois in 2006 began extending health benefits to same-sex domestic partners of state employees. As of Monday, 339 workers and retirees were enrolled.

Last month, the Illinois Department of Insurance and the national association began trying to raise consumer awareness of health insurance options for domestic partnerships.

Domestic partner coverage doesn't add significant additional costs to employer plans, perhaps a maximum of 3 percent, McRaith said. It's partly because domestic partners have fewer children, Hudson added.

Overcoming foes

Yet opposition to same-sex benefits remains.

While the El Paso, Texas, City Council recently approved domestic partnership benefits in its 2010 budget, sole dissenter Carl Robinson cited cost as a reason to oppose the program.

"We're cutting services, and I feel we couldn't afford to do it at this time," Robinson said, adding that if benefits were offered to one group, others would feel left out: What about a single city worker who lives with his or her financially struggling, uninsured parents who are raising younger brothers and sisters? he asked.

"When someone uses the word 'fairness,' they look at one special-interest group. When I look at fairness, I say, 'What is fair for everyone?' "

Robinson said he's not homophobic and has gay and lesbian relatives.

"I served 25 years in the U.S. Army," he said. "I had soldiers, male and female, who were gay and lesbian, and I didn't put them in any special category. ... I demanded the same thing from them as I did from anyone else."

McRaith's journey

In 1987, after college, McRaith backpacked his way through Europe.

"It was on that trip writing in a journal, being alone for months and not knowing anybody, that I accepted that I was gay," he said.

McRaith, who doesn't have a partner, said his family has always been accepting and supportive.

After college, McRaith spent 15 years as a lawyer, eventually becoming a partner at the McGuireWoods LLP law firm. He worked in its commercial litigation department, representing financial-services companies in class-action lawsuits.

In 2005, McRaith was appointed Illinois insurance director.

A November article about McRaith in Leaders Edge, a magazine published by the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers in Washington, said he had emerged as the insurance commissioners association's "consensus-builder of choice," citing an ability to both dig into the details of a problem and then find a resolution to it.

McRaith's former partner had been a financial analyst for an investment firm when he lost his job. He had also had a falling out with McRaith and suffered from depression.

Most suicides are the result of diagnosable and treatable mental illness, said McRaith, whose experience prompted him to become active in the Illinois chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, where he's a board member.

"If my partner, Eric, had access to health insurance through me at that time, he would have been able to see a professional or at least to have received medication that I think would have helped him," McRaith said. "And perhaps he'd still be with us today."