Christian Healthcare Ministries Review

Sometimes you have to start thinking in a new way. To see things as they are and not as you’ve always thought they were. Like health insurance.

I got my first health insurance policy right out of graduate school, and it only cost me $42 a month. I don’t remember many of the details, but I do remember that it covered chiropractic care with a small co-pay when I hurt my back. Throughout the last 20 years, the policies have gotten worse while the payments have gotten higher. Our final policy was $469 a month with a $3500 deductible. Thank heavens we never met that deductible, right? But every visit cost us, and even though Blue Cross got me very good rates, an $80 doctor visit plus medications does make you think about whether you actually need to go in.

But the main thing about insurance is that it’s guaranteed, right? Well except for that time when I was pregnant with twins and my reliable insurance company went bankrupt. If my children had not been born a month early, nothing would have been covered!! I did get stuck with a $10,000 NICU bill, but I’m lucky that the judge paid most of those bills and I’m lucky the hospital negotiated with me. That’s why you sign that personal responsibility form when you are checking into the hospital…

Now, my new silver plan rate came in at $1100 a month with a $6000 deductible. We are self employed and that just doesn’t work for us—nor does a subsidy, since our income changes from year to year. I didn’t know what we’d do about this since I was unable to pay that much and now I was required to buy a policy.

I began googling “healthcare sharing ministry review” and just didn’t find much out there so I called them all for information. For various reasons described here, I ended up choosing Christian Healthcare Ministries. I still pay $450 a month, plus a quarterly fee for the Brother’s Keeper Plan. This quarter our unlimited coverage is $18 for the family, the amount needed to pay the catastrophic bills of the other members in need. My bills need only reach $500 before the other members help me pay the rest. And they have done so when one of my family member’s medical bills exceeded $500. That same family member would have been covered completely if they’d had another incident costing over $500 during the year.

So you see, I had to go through a mental change where I realized that the “not insurance” option was no less reliable than the “insurance” option. In my case it turned out to be better. A friend stated that it was a different mentality, where you don’t want to take advantage of the other people in the ministry; that you want to use the shared resources wisely. I know exactly how he feels! You don’t shoulder your medical expenses alone, but it’s not a product that you are buying. It’s truly a ministry, something that corporate insurance can never be.