The New Health Dialogue

We noticed an item on a list serve the other day about a California woman advertising on the web for a husband with health insurance. We weren't sure if it was legit  -- one of the links had been taken down -- but now we see that she’s had her 15 minutes on national TV. Terri Carlson is 45, divorced, and has a rare genetic disorder called C4 Complement Deficiency, which is a bit like Lupus. Her insurance coverage ends next year, and with a serious pre-existing condition that leaves her highly vulnerable to infection, she will be uninsurable. Unless she finds a policy to marry. We mean, unless she finds a man to marry who has health insurance that will cover a wife.

Unlike most online matchmaking services, she isn’t interested in suitors sending photos. She’s only interested in the size of the co-pay.

But as campy and outrageous as her videos are, her story isn't funny. She has a job, but it doesn't provide health insurance, and even with the insurance she currently has, she has little money left over after she pays her medical bills. (She was able to extend the health policy from her marriage with COBRA, but it ends in early 2011.) She is a life-long Republican -- until she voted for President Obama in 2008.  Now she doesn't understand why Congress doesn't act. The bill doesn't have to be perfect, she says. It just has to help.

She has gotten at least 5,000 emails so far, but they aren't all proposals of marriage. Many are stories of people just like herself. Casualties of the health reform wars.

This is not just about me. It's thousands of e-mails that I have in my inbox now people asking me to be the voice for them, the person, the people that are caught in the middle. I've heard some tragic stories. This is for them, too. If they did a poll on my in-box about health care reform, 99 percent of Americans would want health care reform if they just looked at my in-box.

When you're in my position, you just want the government to do something.  I would have taken anything.

I might want to mention, I've been a Republican my whole life.  President Obama was the first time I've ever voted for a Democrat, so this isn't a political agenda other than the fact I'm a person that has a condition, and I'm a mother, I'm like every other person that can't get health care and I want to live for my children and see grandchildren.

The photo on the top of her website is a portrait of her against a backdrop of arranged flowers. "I know my site looks like a memorial," she wrote. "And it will be unless I get health insurance. That's the point!