Venus Williams just came back from a 16-month break from professional tennis. But she didn’t return because she missed playing — rather, she missed her health insurance.
“I had to come back for the insurance,” Williams, 45, said this week after beating Peyton Stearns — 22 years her junior — at the Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington, D.C.
The crowd at the stadium laughed knowingly. “You guys know what it’s like!” she said.
The 45-year-old Williams, who has won seven major singles titles, took a break from competition and lost access to her regular benefits.
“They informed me this year that I’m on COBRA, so it’s like, I got to get my benefits on,” she said, through laughter, after her match.
The health insurance Venus Williams got through the Women’s Tennis Association was a “best-in-class global medical, dental and vision insurance plan,” WTA wrote in a statement to NPR.
COBRA is a law that allows you to keep your job-based insurance plan after your job ends, but you have to pay for the whole premium yourself.
“With COBRA, you may have a very good plan, but your health care costs are going to go up,” explains Miranda Yaver, health policy professor at the University of Pittsburgh. It’s notoriously expensive, often $500 per month or more. COBRA to cover a whole family’s insurance premium can easily rival a mortgage payment.
Williams recently explained she had surgery for uterine fibroids that had gone undertreated for years, she said. She also was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition called Sjogren’s syndrome in 2011.