The short answer is:
Join a Healthcare Sharing Ministry!
Philip Wegmann writes for The Daily Signal, Aug. 7, 2014, there’s a small-but-growing group of Americans who have chosen to opt out of the Affordable Care Act, better and more aptly called Obamacare. Not only do these organizations ignore the contraception mandate, they also bypass nearly all the hallmark provisions of Obamacare.
Dr. Andrea Miller, medical director and vice president of Christian Care Ministries, said “the biggest thing to understand” is these groups do not provide insurance. Instead, they “facilitate the direct sharing of medical cost between people of like beliefs.”
Because of this distinction, the Alliance for Health Care Sharing Ministries successfully lobbied Congress for a religious exemption in 2009, which allows medical sharing groups to provide a form of coverage but dodge the deluge of Obamacare regulations governing the insurance industry.
James Lansberry, the vice president of Samaritan Ministries that provides health coverage for more than 37,000 families nationwide, calls this exemption the last “isle of freedom” in health care and a “miracle straight from God’s own hand.”
Some 300,000 Americans now find coverage under this umbrella. But first they must promise to walk the straight and narrow, and sign a strict statement of conduct. These honor codes vary among ministries, but they generally echo a similar standard of Christian living: no drugs, no smokes, booze in moderation, and church on Sunday. Members then make monthly contributions that pay the group’s medical bills.
Three reasons motivate Christians to join these healthcare sharing ministries:
- Moral: to avoid funding controversial procedures and products such as abortion and emergency contraception.
- Charitable: to help a fellow believer.
- Fiscal: Joining makes sense financially.
By paying health care providers directly, members say they often can negotiate lower prices. Without co-pays or deductibles, some members save up to $1,000 dollars a month, according to Lansberry.
Joe Guarino of the Alliance of Health Sharing Ministries says health sharing ministries have helped reintroduce market forces to the industry. “We are a free-enterprise alternative, a consumer-driven alternative, and it works.”
Health sharing ministries aren’t without their drawbacks, however. The drawbacks include:
- Members are legally responsible for their own medical bills, and there is no guarantee anyone will “receive a check from anyone else in the ministry.”
- Health sharing ministries regularly exclude a host of pre-existing conditions as ministries work to meet needs and limit costs. Pre-existing conditions present “the most difficult challenge,” according to Lansberry, because his ministry seeks to provide the greatest amount of care but to “do so responsibly without putting the needs of members we already have at risk.”
But ministry leaders say they meet most member’s needs.
Eric Quiram, a self-employed Tennessee father of two, said his healthcare sharing ministry paid the entire cost—about $26,000—for his wife’s recent operation. Quiram didn’t pay a dime more than his monthly contribution to the ministry. He said, “This is where Medi-Share was amazing. It was all shareable, the whole amount.”
Quiram isn’t alone. Ministry leaders say enrollment is growing. Lansberry said his group experienced “dramatic growth” during its open-enrollment period earlier this year and is now preparing for the next round of cancellations under Obamacare.
Robert Moffit, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and one of the country’s foremost experts on health care policy, says these programs represent a positive reaction but not a final solution to the troubles that plague Obamacare. He applauds “any expansion of personal freedom in health care,” but says full repeal of the “unjust and unpopular health care law” must remain the goal because “The common good demands an expansion of personal freedom, not an accommodation with its suffocating restrictions.”
H/t California Political Review
~Eowyn