About the time she was recovering from the stroke, she and her estranged husband began talking about a new wrinkle in the imperfect setup they had agreed to for more than a decade. Her husband, a few years older than Gwen, plans to retire soon. At 65, he'll qualify for Medicare coverage, but the federal program doesn't cover spouses.
So they switched to a backup plan. She started working for her husband's business, Lauterbach and Associates, an architectural firm specializing in affordable housing. It was a way she could get her own insurance coverage, and the couple could finally move forward on a divorce, which they are doing, and go their independent ways.
"One of the things that continues to bother me is how tied [health insurance] is to employment," she says. "What we've done is perfectly legitimate. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't be working at the company with my ex-husband if it weren't for health insurance."
After more than a decade of being tied to a marriage for the health insurance, she is now tied to a job for the same reason, limping toward the Medicare coverage years while hoping illness doesn't strike again and render her unemployable before she turns 65. "I love the company, but it's not what I would be doing if I didn't have to worry about insurance," the Oxnard woman says.
"I favor a single-payer system, taking health insurance away from being a condition of employment," she says. "How many people stay at jobs they hate because they're afraid of losing insurance?"
