It’s truly incredible in this time of rising medical costs, but the Samaritan shares for November were reduced for the 2nd month in a row, this time by 5%. For members who send their share to the office this month for admin costs (that would be us!), the reduction will appear the next time we are assigned a share payment to a family. I haven’t received my newsletter and share slip in the mail for November yet, but I know about the reduction because of my online Samaritan account. If you are already a member I encourage you to activate your online account to see the information available. You can get access to past newsletters, manage your needs and shares, and see the details about your account.
I’m starting to read more comments online about people getting huge premium increases from their insurance companies for 2015. I recommend Samaritan to everyone I can, the benefits of membership are so vast. It’s less expensive than most insurance plans, logical, caring, spiritual, and has a foundation in Christ. The support and caring from Samaritan staff are so helpful when you have a medical need, and knowing you are back in control of your health care and able to see any doctor you want is just priceless. And what insurance company is going to reduce your premium when the claims are lower? None.
Thanks again Samaritan, for continuing to look out for members and showing us a better way to manage health care expenses!
Thanks for all of this great information about Samaritan. I just heard about CHM and then Samaritan after doing tons of research this past week. It sounds great! My husband is joining now and I will be joining after my 2nd baby is due (since I have to keep my insurance for now since it wouldn’t be covered and way too expensive if I don’t have my insurance). We will eventually have the whole family of four on it.
I have read several stories of the published needs having to be prorated due to the needs exceeding the amount of the gifts for that month. Why doesn’t the extra money go into a surplus fund so that when the need exceeds the monthly gifts that the members aren’t put into the situation of having to have their published needs prorated? It seems like if the surpluses from other months went into a fund for those situations, this wouldn’t be an issue that would come up. Do you have any idea why Samaritan operates this way? Do you know if CHM works the same way, or if they have a surplus fund instead of prorating the published needs due to the needs exceeding the monthly gifts? Thanks!
Health share ministries aren’t allowed to pool the money because it makes them too much like insurance companies, which they can’t be since they aren’t subject to insurance regulations. That leaves two options for how to handle shortfalls. One is to prorate, the other is to pay first come first serve when money is available. Samaritan does the prorating method, CHM and Medishare do the first come first serve method. They both have pros and cons from a practical standpoint. Samaritan’s prorating method means even if there’s a shortfall we get the majority of money quickly, waiting a bit for the rest. Prorating is generally 80/20, sometimes 90/10. So we wait on 20%, which is generally caught up within a couple months through a variety of methods. 20% is what insurance tends to leave us with anyway, so I figure waiting a couple extra months for it isn’t a big deal. But we each have to decide if we’re ok with that. (I wrote a post with more prorating detail here: http://samaritanministriesreview.com/whats-the-deal-with-prorating/). CHM’s method means no prorating, but if there isn’t enough funding members could wait a lot longer before anything shows up. I have read of people waiting 4-6 months or more for payment. That’s too long for me, personally. One of them had a review of someone waiting a YEAR (not sure if CHM or Medishare). I would much rather get the bulk faster, but that’s my personal preference. Prorated needs have all been met in some way or another (see linked post) and that comforts me. And knowing that the insurance plan I liked stuck me with 80/20, and the new ones were 70/30 and 50/50… the plan behind prorating didn’t seem so bad anymore. 🙂