Healthcare:
Rewrite laws:
All laws and policies that reference marital status need to be rewritten, with the marital status factor removed or changed to include all relationship statuses, including the status of “single,” or such laws should be abolished altogether. These changes will cause a ripple effect into the larger medical industrial complex, influencing or forcing healthcare institutions, such as insurance agencies, to adjust policies that deny singles equal access to healthcare, but in order to speed the process, patients, legislators, and advocates must also pressure these organizations to change.
Don’t base medical care on marital status:
Additional and explicit federal and state laws must prohibit basing any medical care or benefits on marital status. Although the Affordable Care Act prohibits discriminating on the basis of disability (in addition to other identities, such as race, gender orientation, or age), in practice such discrimination still occurs, and it disproportionately harms disabled single people (and singles in those other disenfranchised demographics). SSI and SSDI law must be changed so that marital status plays no role. Marital status needs to be separated from all disability laws and policies. Ethics and anti-bias trainings need to specifically teach about how to avoid marital and romantic relationship status discrimination.
Allocate workplace benefits equally:
All workplace benefits should be allocated equally, regardless of a worker’s romantic relationship or family status. One way to increase equity, regardless of marital status, would be that instead of offering parental leave, workplaces should offer the same amount of “life event” leave for each employee. Instead of solely offering bereavement leave for a worker’s spouse and nuclear family (and that spouse’s nuclear family), the employer should allow a worker to choose which of their loved ones would qualify for bereavement leave, and/or the employer should offer a set number of bereavement hours per worker, regardless of who dies. Federal and state governments need to prohibit any institution from providing benefits where marital or romantic relationship status is a factor.
Allow patients to arrange paid transport:
Healthcare, hospice, and related facilities need to allow patients to arrange paid transport to a safe place of the patient’s choosing. Medical facilities should consider providing and/or lobbying for affordable, reliable medical transportation systems, rather than assuming that everyone has their own. Even some married people cannot rely on spouses, who might be disabled, out of town, or unhelpful for other reasons.
Allow patient-sanctioned visitations:
Facility staff should either allow visitation (supervised, if needed) to anyone who is verified by the patient to have a close relationship with them and/or whom the patient requests visitation from, or else medical staff should not allow in anyone.
Eliminate bias in insurance underwriting:
Insurance companies need to reevaluate, without bias, the health and accident statistics pertaining to married and single people, by engage with the insurers’ underwriters, actuaries, and other employees. They need to then adjust their prices accordingly.
De-influence the insurance lobby:
Legislators need to stand up against the insurance lobby and minimize their influence in the medical-industrial complex. Patients and allies can be agentic by voting for such legislators. They can also write to said legislators and educate them on the little-known fact that single people, fifty percent of their voting public, often pay more for health insurance for no valid reason, other than that they can’t piggyback off a spouse’s plan.
Remove spousal support question from questionnaires:
Medical offices should remove the spouse question from their questionnaires or ask about support systems in general. Clinicians should ask specific questions to assess a patient’s support system, such as who will give them rides, prepare meals and stay with them during treatments. Professional training programs, medical offices, and hospital policy should educate staff that a spouse is not inherently supportive, and institutions should be clear on their own paperwork about who has the right to decide how patients are cared for.
Educate providers regarding social support networks:
Health facilities must educate providers and workers that a person’s marital status does not indicate whether that person has a social support network. Educate providers that “scientific” studies interpreted as showing that marriage makes people healthy often do not actually show that. Address the systemic, institutionalized discrimination that harms singles’ financial, legal, and socio-cultural situations. This discrimination is a legitimate cause of health problems for singles, much more so than whether they are married or not.
Singles Equality | Singles Bill of Rights 