Anyone have a Christian Medshare policy?

[milkman636]

The fact that you choose to use employer subsidized health care is not the same thing as "there are no practical alternatives".

Employers began offering subsidized health care as a way to attract employees with lower cost than simply offering higher wages. It was a win-win. Employers would pay, roughly, 35% on each dollar and the employee would save 50% on every dollar. Over time, the cost of benefits (mostly health insurance) rose, so employers are paying 55% or more on every dollar of salary.

The funny thing about insurance is that it floods the market with demand with no corresponding increase in supply. That causes prices to increase. Single payer only makes it worse. There is zero competition and the quality of care is much worse.

For example. My daughter is an RN. She got married about 18 months ago and they went to Italy for their honeymoon. She got appendicitis and had to have surgery while she was there. Prior to that, she, like many young people, believed the BS about how great 'free' Healthcare would be. She saw first hand, from a professional viewpoint how much worse the care was in Europe. They were decades behind the US in terms of technology and patient care.

In short, the money has to come from somewhere. In most other countries, the policy makers decide what level of care you get and when you get it...but the rich can still get better private care, often by traveling to the US to get it. When US people travel, it is often because of regulatory issues rather than pure cost, but for some it is cost. When people come to the US for care, it is because of the lack of quality of care or options. I'm sorry, but I'll take our broken system over their broken system all day long.

As I stated in a previous post: I have looked at the online health insurance marketplace that our government promotes to see what what other insurance policies and cost may be available. A soon as I indicate my employer offers an insurance plan it says that I am not eligible. There are no further questions about the costs or benefits of the policy being offered. It's game over. They have built an insurance market place for only people that do not have employers offering any sort of health insurance. Why wouldn't our friends in D.C. build a marketplace that could serve all citizens? Wouldn't any marketplace increase its probability of success by serving a larger number of customers?

Prior to looking I had spent probably 100 hours arguing with my current carrier for taking money back from providers 18 months after the fact because they suspected an injury might have been work related. This was 18 months later, and I only found out because I was hit by collections for the debts. It took three months for them to decide it wasn't a work injury and restore payment to the medical providers. It seems like they complicate things a couple times a year just to see if I'll back down to let them off the hook. I pay thousands in premiums to this company for this kind of hassle, and I'm too the point that I'd pay a little more to not deal with this provider

My employer used offer alternative companies to select from, but they are down to one carrier now. 15 years ago when I hired in the health insurance was a no-cost benefit with no deductibles to meet. That lasted for 2 or 3 years and its been steadily creeping downhill since. It sucks that the best option for exploring different insurance may actually be exploring other jobs. The rest of my job has been good to me.

 

[Torvy]

Why would DC get involved in insurance in any way? Especially for otherwise able- bodied people?

As for why insurance gets more expensive...many reasons, not the least of which is a phenomenon that happens when people think something is 'free'. They tend to use more of that something. Increased demand drives up cost. Higher co-pays and deductibles help to reduce the misuse of the system.

It is even worse in a single pay system because the only option is to ration care. It also creates a economic void because of the disconnect between the cost (taxes) and the benefit (healthcare). People have the perception that it is free, but it is not.

 

[MattB4]

The US insurance and healthcare system is a monster. No amount of good meaning proposals will fix it. No amount of government meddling will either. Christian Medshares was the reaction to the mandate you must have insurance as a means to avoid paying to an insurance company. Just like closing of Hospital ER's were in response to government mandates to treat anyone that showed up regardless of ability to pay for treatment.

The more people, regulations and rules you put in between the customer and the provider the more you add to the cost and complexity. Imagine if you needed Insurance to pay your grocery Bill? Now imagine the government dictating that grocery insurance should cover the cost for those that can not afford groceries. $50 can of Cokes would become the norm.

 

[Snobdds]

As I stated in a previous post: I have looked at the online health insurance marketplace that our government promotes to see what what other insurance policies and cost may be available. A soon as I indicate my employer offers an insurance plan it says that I am not eligible. There are no further questions about the costs or benefits of the policy being offered. It's game over.

That is a law that obamacare introduced, for Obamacare plans only.

They don't want people with access to health insurance through their employer crippling the system. Trust me, companies would farm out their most sickest employees to Obamacare to keep their group rates low. I have seen companies wanting to pay the entire premium and out of pocket costs to put one or two chronically ill people on an obamacare policy.

However it's not game over for you. You are still free to purchase a policy off obamacare through normal insurance companies. We do have plans for people that don't qualify for obamacare and have no access to group coverage. We have a lot of retirees that are not 65, but are well off to retire and need a policy.

I had my parents on one of these before they hit medicare age. I had them on a 10k deductible policy for catistropic stuff. I then got them some Aflac riders that covered things like cancers, labs, etc. I also got them the deductible rider that covered a high deductible if certain illness are diagnosed. It was a huge savings over a richer $1,000 deductible plan, and I would say had better first dollar benefits. Then we set up a HSA to divert some pre tax retirement savings to use on medical expenses pre tax.

There are lots of ways to do insurance.

 

[EddieWalker]

I came from Canada in 1995 to the USA. I know a bit about "free" health care.

You get what you pay for.

My parents are Canadians that moved to the US in 1962. The rest of the family is still in Canada. My wife is a RN with a PhD in nursing and decades of experience working in hospitals from Ohio and Texas.

Couple years ago my cousin in Edmonton Alberta found out that he had Melanoma. He was a CPA at a big company with a significant income, but he relied on his free healthcare. They diagnosed him fairly quickly, but then didn't treat him. After a year of waiting for treatment, he started getting really sick. He asked my wife to talk to his doctor because he didn't understand what they where saying, and with her experience in the medical field, he hoped she could make sense of it.

The short story is that they didn't have anything available to treat him in his area, and he wasn't allowed to go to another area for treatment because they where all too busy to take on anybody else.

He died a few months later in his early 40's.

 

[stephenh]

As far as the Medishare thing goes, a friend told me about them when one of his clients raved about them. I contacted them and was sent a large brochure outlining the qualifications to join. They were things such as we had to prove we were Christians and were members of a Christian church and regularly attended that church and also lived our family life in a Christian manner. The ways to prove all this included being sponsored by a pastor/priest/etc. plus declarations from our fellow congregation members as to our adherence to Christian values and family life. It went on from there. Not for me, I quit looking into them.

 

[Snobdds]

As far as the Medishare thing goes, a friend told me about them when one of his clients raved about them. I contacted them and was sent a large brochure outlining the qualifications to join. They were things such as we had to prove we were Christians and were members of a Christian church and regularly attended that church and also lived our family life in a Christian manner. The ways to prove all this included being sponsored by a pastor/priest/etc. plus declarations from our fellow congregation members as to our adherence to Christian values and family life. It went on from there. Not for me, I quit looking into them.

This is called adverse selection. We go to great lengths to stratify demographics. If you can get a group of similarly traited people, cost prediction is a whole lot better.

It's an insurance companies dream to insure a group of clean living people.

You know what I mean?

 

[ultrarunner]

As I stated in a previous post: I have looked at the online health insurance marketplace that our government promotes to see what what other insurance policies and cost may be available. A soon as I indicate my employer offers an insurance plan it says that I am not eligible. There are no further questions about the costs or benefits of the policy being offered. It's game over. They have built an insurance market place for only people that do not have employers offering any sort of health insurance. Why wouldn't our friends in D.C. build a marketplace that could serve all citizens? Wouldn't any marketplace increase its probability of success by serving a larger number of customers?

Prior to looking I had spent probably 100 hours arguing with my current carrier for taking money back from providers 18 months after the fact because they suspected an injury might have been work related. This was 18 months later, and I only found out because I was hit by collections for the debts. It took three months for them to decide it wasn't a work injury and restore payment to the medical providers. It seems like they complicate things a couple times a year just to see if I'll back down to let them off the hook. I pay thousands in premiums to this company for this kind of hassle, and I'm too the point that I'd pay a little more to not deal with this provider

My employer used offer alternative companies to select from, but they are down to one carrier now. 15 years ago when I hired in the health insurance was a no-cost benefit with no deductibles to meet. That lasted for 2 or 3 years and its been steadily creeping downhill since. It sucks that the best option for exploring different insurance may actually be exploring other jobs. The rest of my job has been good to me.

This is why a small but growing group of care providers no longer take any insurance...

My sister in law showed me a file of unreimbursed claims submitted with most well under $50 and Insurance companies requesting additional documentation or saying not receive, etc... the staff time to get paid for the claim often exceeded the value of the claim...

She was able to lower her price and cut overhead by going to payment at time of service model...

 

[ericm979]

I’ve always wondered why health insurance is so tied to employment here in the US.

In WWII there were wage and price freezes. But employees were scarce and employers needed a way to attract them. Offering company sponsored health care was one way they could do it.

The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance (Published 2017)

More an accident of history than anything else, a product of World War II and tax policy, it is the system we seem to be stuck with.

www.nytimes.com

It’s stupid that employers have to negotiate and manage healthcare care plans. That costs every employer money and time. Switching jobs or attracting employees would also be so much simpler if all that had to be considered were wages and PTO.

To do that we'd need government managed health plans like all the other first world countries have. Before anyone says "but the government is incompetent and can't run that", they do in all the other first world countries. Not to mention our veterans and seniors. Some countries do better than others but all have better outcomes than the US, at a far lower cost.

And it’s also stupid that we can lose health insurance simply by losing or quitting a job. No other insurance I have is tied to my job. I looked at the exchanges once to see if I could purchase my own insurance more competitively, but hit the eligibility wall as soon as I said my employer offered insurance. That was a non-starter, why??? Thats not a free market system at all.

The system makes people captive to their employers. They like that as it keeps their labor costs down.

But the main reason we still have our system is that it's very profitable. Highly placed executives and big investors make a lot of money from the health care industry. It doesn't matter to them that each year hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens are made bankrupt or even homeless due to medical bills. We're the only first world country where that happens.

 

[kenmac]

I'll take my Medicare with supplement over private insurance any day !
When I had private insurance, the Doc's would have to summit any test, procedures, treatment, etc,. to the insurance company for preapproval and play the waiting game to see if what I needed was approved , With Medicare and my supplement, I don't worry it, and the Doc's like not having to summit any treatment, surgeries, test, etc, to Medicare for approval. It's all set out in Medicare as to what they will / will not approve. Medicare pretty much approves what your Doc says you need..
No pre approvals needed !