It is generally agreed that the bill called the Spousal Health Insurance Rights Act (SHIRA) would never have been passed by the Illinois legislature in 1985 without the concerted midwifing efforts of a coalition of organizations under the direction of the Illinois Women’s Agenda. More than a dozen groups, including the National Council of Jewish Women, the Hull House Association, the Illinois Network of Displaced Homemakers, the League of Women Voters, and the Older Women’s League, participated in the hard-fought, four-year struggle to bring the creature to birth. It faced a host of obstacles, not the least of which was the Illinois insurance industry. In essence, SHIRA provides that when a spouse who is covered by a group insurance plan dies or obtains a divorce, the other spouse can remain on the plan for an extended period. Before SHIRA, non-employed widows and divorcees often found themselves suddenly cut adrift with no medical coverage–their former family policy canceled and their income insufficient to get a new one.
“She’s the one who got me involved in the whole thing,” laughs Pat Taylor, director of the North Shore Senior Center. “And through her a lot of others got involved. She’s the kind of leader who just sort of draws you into things.”
Halperin does not see herself as a patron saint of anything. On the contrary, she still feels occasional pangs of guilt over a “hard and cruel” thing she did to her husband more than three years ago. As he languished in a Chicago nursing home, she obtained a legal separation from him, thus salvaging for herself what was left of their combined assets.
Some maintain senior citizens are already consuming too much of America’s limited resource pie, and as their numbers increase (the baby boom generation is just now hitting middle age), they may gobble up the whole thing. Young professionals wonder whether the Social Security Fund will be around when they need it, whether Medicare can keep pace with the actuarial tables, and whether the Medicaid net will soon let more people fall through than it catches. Some experts predict a “generation war” in the offing–embittered young and embattled old fighting it out over scarce resources in legislatures, courts, hospital rooms, and–who knows?–even the streets. The growing effort to legalize euthanasia may be viewed as a less than subtle attempt to impose a “final solution” before the conflict gets violent.
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For years he was in and out of hospitals and psychiatrists’ offices, with insurance and Medicare paying most of the bills. Grace took care of him and continued working part-time as a social worker. As his mental derangement progressed, Lee refused all medical help for a time, so that his physical condition only worsened. For the Halperins the retirement dream turned into a full-blown nightmare.
“Together we had saved about $25,000 over the years,” says Grace. “It seemed like a lot when we were putting it together but it went out awfully fast. I became angry and resentful–all our savings going for the medical expenses of one spouse. Marriage, I thought, was supposed to be a partnership.”
When she discussed the situation with Lee at the nursing home, he had some difficulty understanding what it was all about. “He was concerned about my welfare,” she says, “and finally he told me ‘Do what you have to do.’”
