With a new administration in Washington and the fate of Obamacare changing daily, I’m so happy to know we have Samaritan as our steady foundation for our family’s health care needs. We are largely insulated from the tumult that the ACA is giving people. I feel terrible for those who are being hit with high premium and deductible increases or who are even facing the loss of their coverage with providers pulling out of states. The uncertainties surrounding insurance right now is devastating for so many.
If you are in the awful predicament of having unreliable insurance options, please give health care sharing ministries a serious review. These ministries are providing an even better option than insurance for hundreds of thousands of people. If you’re already a member, tell your friends! The top 3 ministries aren’t small anymore. Samaritan is sharing over $24 million a month in needs for 225,000+ members. That’s a huge support system for those who wonder how and if it really works. The ministries have been around for decades demonstrating their stability and staying power. Members are happy, even joyful. Once upon a time the ministries used to be a best kept secret, but now it’s not hard to find someone who has either heard of one or knows someone who is a member of one. They’re becoming quite popular and for good reason. Samaritan is affordable, logical, biblical, and fulfilling a ministry mission to bear one another’s burdens in the name of Christ. Members are happy, getting the health care they need, and not having to break the bank to do it.
For many of us now it’s no longer a case of, “is this a good idea”; it’s now a matter of “can we afford not to” and “why didn’t we do this sooner?”
I pray for the continued success of the ministries, that God will put Samaritan on the hearts of those who need something better, and for the entire health care world to bring costs under control.
Feel free to browse through this site for more information or click here to get an info packet from Samaritan.
Heather,
Thanks for the great site! We’re a family of six and just signed up for Samaritan today. I just moved to part time with my current job so our insurance went away (working half time with a new business… easing into it). We were with Medi-Share about six years ago. Our experience there was good, the process was a bit slow and tedious sometimes, but we always felt like we had an advocate instead of the same old runaround that we got with insurance companies always finding the fine print to weasel out of paying claims.
I love the philosophy of these ministries and I also love how it works out on the practical level to be more economical… at least that was our experience. What sold us on Samaritan this time was the potential for alternative care (which CHM appears to outright reject) and ambulance travel is covered.
Here’s a question I think is worth asking you since you have obviously put a lot of thought into the topic of healthcare coverage. I have had a long term disability insurance plan for 4 or 5 years now. I am losing this also leaving my full time job and am questioning whether our family should have it. Any thoughts?
BJ Cure
Hi BJ. Thanks for writing. I agree about the health sharing ministries being advocates for us. I feel the same way. And I’m glad to hear you have joined Samaritan, I think you’ll be very pleased with your choice. We have been very happy members for a few years now and our need was shared in just 2 months, which is faster than insurance ever paid for us.
Your question about disability insurance is a tough one. If your job is high risk for an accident it would lend more toward having it (cost would likely go up), but if you’re a desk jockey then it’s probably less necessary. Of course an accident can occur at anytime that a disability policy could help with, but overall we have to weigh the odds against the cost. Some policies can be pretty pricey with strict payout rules and I firmly believe we can insure ourselves into poverty. Being alive has a certain level of risk and we can’t control everything, nor can we afford to insure against everything. You would need to weigh your level of risk against the cost, and also consider payment timelines (most start after 6 months), whether your outside investments (retirement, etc) could assist, current assets, what your social security would contribute, whether you think another job is possible later, etc. I have always found disability insurance to be tricky as there are so many variables to consider and like most insurance plans they seem more interested in taking my money than actually helping. Medicine and treatments get more advanced all the time, so even if someone couldn’t go back to their old occupation, could they have a new one? Policies tend to cap at 60-70% of income, so we’re still not looking at a return to full income status and how much would we pay in to get that? Plan prices can vary a lot. We hope the policy is pointless, so we need to know the strong likelihood we’re throwing that money away. I always think information is a good idea so I would recommend speaking with a trusted insurance advisor and getting some rates and terms. It commits you to nothing, but you’ll have the information to consider. For those with the means it seems like saving toward a good retirement policy and a good life insurance plan can often be the better option, but there are just too many variables to make that true for everyone. My answer isn’t much help. I don’t currently have a disability policy, but do have good life insurance. The part that bugs me is that we’re more likely to be disabled, but my job is very desk oriented, my exposure to potential problems is fairly low, and there’s a good chance I’d still be able to do my job or something like it. Not 100%, but I can’t insure everything. Odds are more likely that we’d have a short term disability to deal with, one of those policies should probably be considered. I don’t have one yet, but am thinking of looking into it.
I think those are great thoughts. It’s a good time for Christians to prayerfully question the status quo about things we’ve been told to do and how to do them… retirement, insurance, politics, etc.
I like your statement, “we can insure ourselves into poverty”. I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve become a big fan of the good old emergency fund concept promoted by Dave Ramsey and others. It’s like an umbrella insurance plan that covers a lot of things, including eliminating the need for short term disability insurance, in my opinion. Figuring out whether long term disability is needed is more complex, and you addressed a lot of the issues well.
I have this idea that, if our family has enough of a nest egg, to tell my kids when they leave the house not to get life insurance. I would love to look them in the eye and even put it in writing, saying, if you or your spouse dies early, we have this emergency fund of $xxxxxxx to provide for you. So, rather than my kids giving money to an insurance company, we self insure. Just a dream, no big deal if it doesn’t happen. In the meantime, I have a life insurance plan for me and my wife because it is cheap. But it seems the argument could be made that this should be the church’s responsibility as we are instructed to take care of widows and orphans.
Risk, faith, and stewardship all interact with each other and this is often missing from traditional financial advice. Retirement plans and insurance are important things to think and pray through, and plan for, but they are secondary to relationships, good health, exercise, wise living, living frugally, having a cash emergency fund, and most importantly, knowing that God is in control and He is our ultimate “insurance”.
Here are some related thoughts. We live in the Pacific Northwest where it’s been estimated that we have a 37% chance of an 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude earthquake in the next 50 years. If that happens, it could be very bad, potentially the worst economic disaster the US has ever seen, not to mention loss of life. This has bugged me enough in the past few years that I started a business helping people assess seismic risks and strengthen their houses. Many people are interested in buying earthquake insurance and I firmly believe an event of that magnitude would bankrupt insurance companies, and for the more stable companies, perhaps result in delayed, partial payouts. We seem to love putting our faith in insurance companies as a society (a form of idolatry, maybe?). It’s been interesting for me addressing this topic; it puts a whole different spin on life insurance, disability insurance, etc. It’s also made me wrestle with the psychology of fear, faith, preparedness, etc.