Optima Health - A Health Insurer that Discriminates Against Same Sex Couples

It is only within the last couple of years that Virginia law has allowed employers to offer health insurance benefits to domestic partners of their employees. Sadly, even though the Virginia General Assembly has finally enacted legislation that allows employers - both large and small - to offer health care coverage to the domestic partners of their employees (it was the last state in the USA to do so), many health insurance providers continue to discriminate against same sex couples. A case in point is Optima Health - an affiliate of Sentara Health Care Systems which has a near monopoly in hospital care facilities in the Hampton Roads of Virginia. Yes, it's true that on the Virginia Peninsula Riverside Health Systems has dodged a Sentara take over so far, as has Chesapeake General Hospital and two Catholic owned hospitals in the region.

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Obviously, the disingenousness of the Optima Health logo above is obvious if your business is a gay owned business or employs partnered gays as employees (i.e., like my business). In that case, one is SOL unless your company has over 100 employees. That's right, Optima does not offer coverage to partners of covered employees of businesses in small group plans. While individual policies for non-covered domestic partners may be available, they typically (1) cost considerably more and (2) have significantly inferior coverage. Personally, I find this situation outrageous.

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I urge readers who believe that Optima's discriminatory practices need to go to contact Optima via one of the following avenues (locals also have the option of patronizing a non-Sentara controlled hospital until such time as Optima's anti-gay discrimination ends):
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Optima Health
4417 Corporation Lane
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Main number: (757) 552-7401
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Carol Via Flynn
Corporate Director
Marketing & Communications
cavia@sentara.com

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Emma Inman, APR
Director, Corporate Communications
eainman@sentara.com

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Becky Lawson, APR
Corporate Communications Consultant
rrlawson@sentara.com