After being with the same woman for 18 years, Thomas Keck could finally provide his significant other with health care through his job.

Keck, a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, said he used to have to pay out of pocket for health care that wasn’t adequate so his domestic partner would be covered. Keck’s job covered his two children but not the person who gave birth to them. Now, for the first time starting this year, Keck is able to cover her.

‘It was a long time coming. She deserves the same benefits that anybody else’s spouse or partner gets on campus,’ said Keck, who was on University Senate’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns Committee when the benefits were proposed.

Keck and his partner are just one of about 50 nonmarried couples signed up for the new health benefits extended to opposite-sex domestic partners for the first time at SU this year, said Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs, in an e-mail.

The benefits, which cover medical, dental and vision care, went into effect Jan. 1, he said. SU employees and graduate assistants had until Nov. 12 to sign up their partners for the benefits, Quinn said.

The university estimated only 110 employees would sign up, according to a March 10 article in The Daily Orange. The actual number is almost half that, with approximately 50 signing on.

Quinn said the number is somewhat lower than the school’s long-term expectation, but he expects that number to grow as employees and graduate student assistants become more familiar with the benefits and decide they are the best option for their family.

He said staff members were informed of this new benefit through extensive open enrollment communications. This included newsletters and informal face-to-face sessions conducted throughout the campus.

For domestic partners of the opposite-sex to receive benefits, the couple has to be in a mutual supportive and committed relationship, in which the two have been living together for at least six months, according to the Benefits Eligibility Policy.

The couple must also share joint responsibility for another’s common welfare, which could include taking out a joint mortgage, joint ownership of a motor vehicle, designating a domestic partner as a primary beneficiary of an employee’s life insurance or being named parents in an adoption agreement, according to the policy.

A couple can qualify for the health care benefits if two of the five criteria are met, according to the policy.

In its report to USen, the LGBT Concerns Committee reported that more than 5 million unmarried opposite-sex couples live together as partners and are two to three times more likely than married couples to lack health insurance.

The benefits ‘would mark an important step toward the principle that all employees should receive equal benefits for their families as they define them,’ the report stated.

Keck said he thinks there are two reasons why SU decided to give new health benefits to nonmarried opposite-sex couples.

First he said the decision had to do with a matter of principle.

‘The LGBT Concerns Committee made the case, and lots of people were persuaded that it was a matter of equity, equal treatment of all employees,’ Keck said. ‘If we’re going to provide various kinds of benefits to the family members of employees, it should be up to the employee who their family members are.’

He said everybody’s family, no matter how different, should be entitled to the same benefits.

A federal tax law treats domestic partners differently from married couples because it increases the cost of benefits for the domestic partners who receive health benefits from their employer, Keck said.

For employers who cover domestic partners, the partner’s coverage is still taxed as income, according to the LGBT committee report from March 18, 2009. While SU provides $1,000 to same-sex couples, it does not pay anything extra toward opposite-sex couples.

The second reason was implementing the benefits for these couples would keep SU competitive against other peer institutions in terms of recruiting new faculty and staff, Keck said.

The LGBT Committee first proposed the benefit to USen in 2007, which Keck said caused ‘vigorous debate.’

One of the oppositions to giving these couples benefits was the blurry line on whether they should receive the benefits because opposite-sex couples have the option to marry, said Robert Van Gulick, a philosophy professor and member of USen’s Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee.

Van Gulick said no matter how emotionally attached people are to their partners, they bear none of the financial responsibility as a married couple.

‘Some people say, ‘It’s immaterial whether we’re married or not. If we’re together, we’re together,” he said. ‘What difference does it make? Well, as far as the law is concerned, it’s enormously different.’

Margaret Himley, who was on the LGBT Concerns Committee during the proposal, said people need to look beyond the definition of marriage.

Said Himley: ‘People have the right to decide on their own families and that marriage isn’t the gold standard.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

 

 

Published on February 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm