Life With Christian Healthcare Sharing - The Fears, The Blessings

Since Danielle and I decided to become members of a Christian healthcare sharing organization we've gotten tons of questions from people who read our post "A Look At The Three Big Christian Healthcare Sharing Options." People want to know what it's been like, how it works, and even does it work.

So here's what our experience has been like so far.

But first, a quick recap.

Danielle and I decided we didn't want any part of the government's version of affordable healthcare. It's cost is astronomical, it's unethical, it's unnecessarily complicated, and it forces us to pay for medical procedures that we don't agree are biblical. Thanks to some provisions in the law, organizations like Christian Healthcare Ministries, Medi-Share, and Samaritan Ministries can legally provide health coverage to Christians without having to pay the penalty for not having Obamacare. It's perfectly legal. It works. And it's a monumental blessing.

Though, admittedly, it's a bit scary at first.

We took some time to look into the big three Christian healthcare sharing options—Christian Healthcare Ministries (CHM), Medi-Share, and Samaritan Ministries. All three have different strengths that will satisfy the needs of their individual members, but CHM seemed to suit our needs the best.

Christian Healthcare Ministries

CHM is actually the oldest of the big three, having been around since 1984. This gave us an element of trust that this organization, having proven itself sustainable, could help us meet our medical needs. They are a nonprofit health cost sharing ministry through which Christians help other Christians with their medical expenses.

How it works is pretty simple: when you have a medical need you go to the doctor. At some point, someone at the hospital will ask you about insurance. You say, "I have insurance, but you just treat me as a self-pay patient." They nod and go, "Oh, ok. Sure. No problem." A couple weeks later you'll get a bill and a letter saying that as far as the hospital is concerned you are responsible to cover the cost. You submit that bill to CHM. CHM members submit their monthly portion and your medical needs are covered. That's it in a nutshell anyway.

We're Pregnant. Yay! ... I Mean, "Gulp!"

Back at the beginning of October Danielle told me that we were expecting. We couldn't be more excited! So far everything has gone pretty smoothly—doctor's visits, getting bills, submitting them to CHM. There's been a bit of a learning curve because we are basically in charge of our healthcare needs. There are some forms to fill out and some steps to go through, but the folks at CHM have been more than helpful every step of the way.

SOMETHING IMPORTANT Even though we decided to become members of CHM, we're not knocking Medi-Share or Samaritan Ministries. All three are great programs that have different benefits. We chose CHM based on our medical needs, which are few. We encourage people to get some literature from each sharing organization, and even call them to ask questions to find out which one is right for you.

In short, things are going well with CHM. We plan to continue using them and highly recommend them.

It can definitely stretch your nerves joining up with a healthcare sharing organization like CHM. It requires a step of faith, for sure, because the ministry relies on the support of God's people, and their support is dependent on God's provision. But His Word says that He is faithful. And He is! We've found that as we step out in faith with CHM, God rewards that faith. It's a tremendous blessing!

If you found this information to be helpful, and choose to use Christian Healthcare Ministries, would you consider signing up under us as a thank you for all our research? You can use this link to do that: Christian Healthcare Ministries. Thanks!

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RELATED POSTS
The Horrendous Healthcare Hunt Begins!

The Horrendous Healthcare Hunt, Part 2: The Why

Life Without Obamacare Is Beautiful... But Complicated

A Look At The Three Big Christian Healthcare Sharing Options

UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 2022
We have received more feedback on this blog post than any other. Over 49,000 views and hundreds of comments, emails, questions, and shares. We are still using our Christian healthcare sharing alternative for our insurance and we love it! As far as we know everything in the following article is still accurate and relevant.

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Ok, quick recap.

Like most Americans, Danielle and I disagree with many of the aspects of Obamacare, but unlike most Americans we're not just going to accept it, especially since it so very blatantly goes against our beliefs. It is also astronomically expensive. So we have been on the hunt for an alternative solution to healthcare for the last few months and have been researching several Christian sharing ministries, namely: Medi-Share, Samaritan Ministries, and Christian Healthcare Ministries. I think all three have different strengths that will satisfy the needs of their individual members, but let me break down what we've found as briefly and simply as possible.

DISCLAIMER Just because there are parts of these programs that didn't appeal to us doesn't mean they're not the right fit for you. Danielle and I are both healthy, young, and on the verge of starting a family, so those factors weighed heavily on our decision. We encourage you to get some literature from each sharing organization and even call them to ask questions to find out which one is right for you.

MEDI-SHARE
This is the big one. This is the one we keep hearing about on our local Christian radio station, but just because they advertise doesn't mean they're the best (yes, I'm thinking of you, GEICO!) Anyway, Medi-Share has been around since 1993 and has an excellent track record of providing for its members' needs. They say that in the last 16 years every eligible need has been covered—eligible being the key word here.

One example given by a Medi-Share representative was the story of a member who was injured in a car accident and required a lot of medical work, but since the person was intoxicated at the time of the accident the expense was not covered. It's easy to think that they should give the guy a break, but at the same time Medi-Share's whole point is that by living a more biblical lifestyle you will be healthier and have fewer medical needs, which is understandable, because...

"Too many rules is legalistic, but too much grace is enabling."
—Rachel Cruze, Financial Peace University

PROS

• They negotiate your medical bills for you, working directly with your doctor
• More lenient on preexisting conditions
• If you meet certain health criteria you can get a reduction in your monthly share
• They will help fund up to two adoptions per household with an amount determined by your Annual Household Portion (how much you pay every year for coverage)
• Great plan if you like a more "hands off" approach when dealing with medical bills

CONS

• They can be picky about who you use for a doctor, preferring you use one of their "in-network" doctors, or that you ask your doctor to join their network
• Expensive. Medi-Share functions a lot like a high deductible insurance plan where you pay a certain amount called the "Annual Yearly Portion" FIRST before they'll kick-in any extra
• Their criteria pertaining to adoption seems very strict and suited for the more expensive plans
• You have to be accepted into the program. Not everyone gets accepted.

Click here for more details about how Medi-Share works. And if you're curious, you can read their guidelines or check out their "Share Calculator" to see what your Annual Household Portion would be.

If you decide to use Medi-Share, and appreciate all the research we've provided in this post, please use this referral link: http://bit.ly/2mDuhc7. Thank you!

SAMARITAN MINISTRIES
From the get-go we really liked the look of Samaritan Ministries' healthcare options. Again, their track record is good and a lot of people say more good things about them than not. We even have friends who use it and recommended it to us highly.

With Medi-Share, your monthly share is sent directly to the organization and then they sort through all the claims and make the payments. With Samaritan's Ministries, however, you pay your monthly share directly to the individual in need. That's right, every month Samaritan's Ministries sends you a name and address of another member and your monthly portion is sent directly to them. Yes, it feels weird, but members claim it's a very exciting way to handle medical expenses because you know where your money is going, you get to pray for and encourage the people you're helping, and you get their help in return.

Samaritan's Ministries has a $250,000 limit, meaning they'll only pay your medical costs up to that amount. They have a program called "Save to Share" to help with larger medical expenses, but that requires another payment in addition to your monthly share. It's your responsibility to set this money aside every year so that if another member ever has a claim more than $250,000 you may be called upon to help pay that burden.

PROS

• Simple. No nonsense approach. No red tape.
• Low yearly rates
• Christians caring for Christians. You send your monthly share directly to fellow believers in need.
• Low deductibles
• You can go to any doctor without them having to join the ministry's network or be "approved"
  
  UPDATE
• Samaritan Ministries can assist members with "patient advocacy services" to negotiate lower rates and improve the relationship between the member and the provider.

CONS

• Because we are getting ready to start having kids, child wellness is a big concern for us, especially in the first few months after they're born when they're going to the doctor often. I spoke to a Samaritan Ministries representative about this and, I'm sad to say, they have no post-natal care options. Regular wellness visits, vaccinations, anything "routine" is not covered.
  
  UPDATE
• Publishable maternity needs include bills for prenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, miscarriage, and congenital conditions. Well checks and vaccinations are not publishable.
• 
  You have to pay your medical bills 100% out of pocket and Samaritan's Ministries reimburses you for the amount. Not a great deal if you're just starting out and don't have a lot of liquid cash.
  
  UPDATE
• Apparently you have two choices when paying for your medical services: you can either pay up front, or negotiate with your hospital to have your bills paid through Samaritan's sharing organization. If you pay up front you will get reimbursed, but that also leaves no room for Samaritan Ministries to help you negotiate down the cost of your hospital bills. Once the bills are paid, the process is closed. So it's best to just explain to your hospital that your bills will be paid through Samaritan Ministries, submit your bills to the organization, and pay your hospital as the members' checks come in, usually in 30-to-60 days.
• Here is a very comprehensive list of positives and negatives, but the negatives are more concerns than anything. This is still a very positive review of the program.

Honestly, we found very few negatives with this option. Samaritan Ministries seems to be a great program, just not right for us at this time in our lives.

CHRISTIAN HEALTHCARE MINISTRIES
This program is very different from the first two and it's the one that Danielle and I have decided suits us the best. We like it because it offers a variety of membership levels that you can choose from depending on how much coverage you want. You can even choose different levels for different family members, which is a huge perk considering I'm a healthy 32-year-old dude who won't likely need any serious medical care for a while, and Danielle is a healthy 27-year-old dudette who is likely to become pregnant. So, yeah, she needs more coverage than me.

Amanda, at www.thepelsers.com, talks about how she and her family saved $600 a month, $7,000 a year, on health insurance by switching to Christian Healthcare Ministries. Click here to read her article.

UPDATE: DECEMBER 20, 2016
We recently learned that there is a $125,000 cap for auto accidents. CHM expects that your auto insurance company will cover whatever damages you incur in the event of an accident—which means you are responsible for having the most coverage your auto insurance will provide—but if once that insurance is used up, CHM will step in to cover the rest up to $125,000.

What if the damages are immense—say, two million dollars? Here is the response from CHM representative Jason Spencer.

"Yes, that is correct. We would only share up to $125,000. Two million in bills, so you know, is very difficult to incur. The most we have ever had is a little over one million in bills, and that was over several years for a cancer patient. Between the hospital's write-offs and other sources (maybe even court winnings), there is no way you would ever be stuck with almost a million out of pocket. No insurance company would ever cover that, either, to be clear."

PROS

• They have a good post-natal care program covering the routine visits of the child for the first three months.
  UPDATE
• I was told two different things from two different representatives, but the second actually referred to their guidelines, so that's the one I'm going with. He said that any non-routine medical bills your baby incurs in the first three months are eligible for sharing. Normal immunization shots and wellness visits are not.
• Different levels of coverage make this a highly flexible option, and those coverage levels can be changed whenever you want.
• Very affordable
• One person is considered one unit. So a family of two means you have to purchase two units, and the same with a family of three. But any families larger than three—be it five, ten or even twenty—are still considered THREE units.
• Has a separate program called Brothers Keeper to help with extremely large medical bills. This seems very similar to Samaritan Ministries' "Save to Share" program.
• They also have a Reduction Department that aims to help you negotiate with your doctor to get the lowest possible prices on your healthcare.
• They are the oldest of the "big three," having been around since 1984.

CONS

• I can't say we found many cons with this program. It suits our needs perfectly. But, like with any of these sharing ministries, you have to take a step of faith to get involved with one, which is kinda scary.
  
  UPDATE
• If you are a Medicaid or Medicare member, Christian Healthcare will act as a secondary insurance provider. In other words they won't publish your need unless you've already been turned down by your primary insurance provider, if you even have one.
  
  UPDATE
• Their processing department is very slow. Needs are usually processed in about three months, but we experienced a wait of about five months with some of the medical bills from our son's birth in June. When I asked CHM why it was taking so long I was told that due to the overwhelming amount of people signing up since Obamacare was enacted, CHM has been inundated with needs. In one respect this is a good thing because it means the ministry is growing, which means more people helping other people, but for those that don't have a lot of liquid cash it could mean waiting a while for CHM to send a check to cover your medical expenses.

So, that's that. Stay tuned, because I'm sure we'll be blogging more soon about our experiences with healthcare sharing ministries!

Keep pinchin' :-)

If you found this information to be helpful, and choose to use Christian Healthcare Ministries, would you consider signing up under us, as a thank you for all our research? You can use this link to do that Christian Healthcare Ministries. Thanks!

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RELATED POSTS
The Horrendous Healthcare Hunt Begins!
April 11, 2014

The Horrendous Healthcare Hunt, Part 2: The Why
May 27, 2014

Life Without Obamacare Is Beautiful... But Complicated
June 3, 2014

Life Without Obamacare Is Beautiful... But Complicated

I'm just going to come right out and warn you: if you're planning on hunting down your own health insurance you're going to have to learn to navigate some pretty complicated waters.

For the past few months Danielle and I have been investigating Christian healthcare sharing solutions, and it's proven to be a complex task trying to figure it all out. The whole learning curve has been... not fun. In fact, it's the very antithesis of fun. It's un-fun.

But here at Penny Pinching Prose we're all about enduring un-fun to serve you better *wink*

If you've read our blog for any amount of time you probably know just how much the wife and I dislike Obamacare. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with how much we like freedom, how much we value what our veterans fought and died for, and just how much we appreciate all the hell our forefathers went through to establish a country free from tyranny. What can I say—we're Americans.

So, anyway, we're going to spend some of this week blogging about what we've learned about Christian healthcare alternatives. What are they, exactly? Are they reliable? Is it a good idea to get involved in one?

OK, SO BASICALLY...
The first thing you need to understand about share ministries is that they are NOT insurance. Though some of them function almost exactly like an insurance company, there is one major difference: insurance companies offer legally binding contracts in which they agree to pay your medical bills, whereas share ministries rely on members SHARING their income to meet the medical expenses of other members. There is no guarantee that your bills will be paid when you're with a share ministry. It requires an element of trust in God's provision.

A gamble? Perhaps. Except that God has an excellent track record of caring for His people THROUGH His people. On top of that the three major share ministries available in America today also have excellent track records of continuous coverage of their members' medical expenses.

HOW DO THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS?
How is it that these organizations can allow people to opt-out of some of Obamacare's unfavorable demands—like subsidizing abortions—yet still meet the requirements of the healthcare law? Well, basically it's because our First Amendment rights are still being upheld... albeit to a very small degree. It's the result of Congressmen Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat, and Senators Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Charles Grasslet, a Republican from Iowa. They fought to add the exemption to the law. It's the same principle that allowed for the Amish to be exempted from the individual mandate—with the crucial difference being that it's a lot more practical to join a share ministry than it is to become Amish. Although that would be cool.

The exemption requires qualifying health-sharing ministries to have been in operation before Dec. 31, 1999, which gives something of a monopoly to the three qualifying organizations—Medi-Share, Samaritan Ministries, and Christian Healthcare Ministries.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
They all work pretty much the same way: to join you agree to pay a certain "share" every month, which  is similar to the premium you would pay with an insurance company, except your money goes into a giant fund from which other members receive money for their medical expenses. At Medi-Share, for example, the funds are distributed by the organization, but at Samaritan Ministries the individual members handle the money, so when you need a medical expense covered you'll get checks from several different people instead of the organization.

I know. It sounds weird.

So say you break your arm. You go to the doctor and tell them that you're a "self-pay" patient. You work out a billing schedule or pay up front. After receiving care, you notify the share ministry of your medical bill which is looked at to determine if it meets their guidelines for sharing and then they reimburse you directly. In some cases they'll pay up front.

BUT HERE'S WHAT THEY DON'T COVER
Unfortunately, all three main share ministries treat regular doctor visits—like vaccinations, prescriptions for chronic illness, and check-ups—as something you need to budget for in addition to the share amount you pay every month. Their policies vary slightly, but they all seem to take the same position on this to one degree or another.

Still, even with the monthly share amount and budgeting for regular doctor visits, members pay significantly less than they would with Obamacare—i.e., through an insurance provider at work—especially if you're in the middle class tax bracket.

IS THIS SOLUTION RELIABLE?
Well, it depends on who you talk to really. Some people say share ministries are great because of their biblical-based alternative to Obamacare. Others say they are unreliable, that payouts for your medical bills are dependent on other people, which means there is no guarantee that you'll get financial assistance in the event of a medical crisis.

If you're a normal human being with any level of financial responsibility that might make you say, "Umm, yikes!"

Historically I've never met an insurance company that was reliable either. Time and time again I've been screwed by insurance companies that are busting at the seams with dollar bills yet unwilling to let go of a single one of them. So, personally, I don't mind not wasting another second on insurance companies.

Ultimately, Danielle and I like the faith-aspect of share ministries and how it forces us to be more aware of how God should be at the center of our healthcare decisions. We like that we get to use our money to help other Christians, that we can pray for them and encourage them through their medical trials. We like not paying an arm and a leg for insurance that goes against our beliefs as Christians, our rights as Americans, and supports things that are clearly against God's Word.

Tomorrow we're going to talk in more detail about the pros and cons of the three major share ministries, so stay tuned!

And in the meantime...

Keep pinchin' :-)

The Horrendous Healthcare Hunt Begins!

Ok. Healthcare. Whether or not we want it, it is being forced upon us, in one form or another. I suppose if our imaginary kiddos are ever going to become real we're going to need insurance, or some kind of alternative, because life without it just isn't feasible, or wise.

Where to begin? Now that we're done shaking our fist at the government, it's time to stop fooling around and figure something out, which requires a lot of research, time, and effort. Moreover, we finally have our budget where we want it, and adding healthcare to the mix means rebuilding it practically from the ground up. And who wants to go there? Definitely not the Free Spirit—AKA the hubby.

Initially, we thought the best option would be getting healthcare through our employer, but that's expensive and, because of ObamaCare, funds things we don't agree with—like abortion and the morning after pill.

So what are our alternatives? There's Medi-Share, which we hear about on the Christian radio station all the time. It seems to be a good program, but in some ways it acts as an insurance in that there is an Annual Household Portion that you have to pay prior to making any claims. They also have provider fees that you have to pay for each visit. Is this good? Bad? Hard to say at this point.

Then there's Samaritan's Ministries, which also appears to be a good program. They do not have an Annual Household Portion because they point out that you are responsible for your healthcare costs, not a portion, but all of it. They're not insurance. They're a sharing ministry, which can be hard to wrap your head around if you're new to the concept, but it's worked since 1994. However, the downside to this alternative is that there is a minimum of $300 in order to make a claim. Who knows how many visits we'll make to the doctor that are under $300—probably not many in today's healthcare world—but you never know.

What else is there? We could pay Obama's hefty fine, but we hate the thought of giving people money who don't deserve it. Then there's always the possibility of having my husband deliver our children here at our home, but he tells me that's not going to happen. Hey, it's an alternative. I didn't say it was a good one.

If we've learned anything about health insurance from Dave Ramsey it's that living without health insurance is like gambling with your financial future. All it would take is one accident to ruin everything we've fought so hard to achieve, and that's not a gamble we're willing to make.

So what is your experience with healthcare alternatives? Have you any advice on Medi-Share or Samaritan's Ministries or even another option? Let us know in the comments below.

Keep pinchin' :-)