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Are Health Care Sharing Ministries Worth It?

Are health care sharing plans like AlieraCare worth it

 

UPDATE: Trinity is no longering offering health sharing.  OneShare is the closest equivalent and you can quote them here

 

It's a common question we get.

 

And a legitimate one.

 

Granted, the cost of health sharing plans like OneShare are much less than regular insurance (if we're not getting a tax credit) but that doesn't answer the question.

 

What are people really asking here?

 

It's simple.

 

They're asking if a health sharing ministry plan will actually pay out if something comes up.

 

That's what they mean by is it worth it.

 

We've been in the health insurance industry for over 20 years.

 

We've seen lots of junk health plans that were definitely not worth it.

 

Despite the ACA (Obamacare) law, they're still out there.


We've even called the Department of insurance on them back in the day after getting calls of people basically left to dry from these "association plans".

 

The DOI said they couldn't do anything because they were association plans domiciled in Texas.

 

Great!

 

That's really helpful to the person who has it and is looking at a $20K hospital bill.

 

Seeing the other side of the equation and generally being good people, we wanted to vet these health sharing options to see if they might be worth it.

 

There's a whole segment of the population who genuinely can't afford ACA health plans.


It's not even in the ballpark.

 

If you're over 50 and do not qualify for a tax credit, your monthly cost on a Bronze plan can be $700-1000 month.

 

Your income might be $50K!

 

That means you're expected to pay 20% of your income towards health insurance and still have almost a $7K deductible.

 

It's either a health sharing plan or nothing for many of these people.


But is it worth it?

 

Let's look at that question and make sure you understand the differences.

 

You can always quote health sharing plans here:



health sharing for short term plans in California

 

Otherwise, you can jump to any section:

 

 

Let's get started

 

Important considerations to see if healthcare sharing plans are worth it

 

Keep in mind that health sharing ministry plans are not health insurance.

 

They are memberships where members share eligible health care costs.


There are some big differences between health sharing and health insurance.

 

Some big ones are:

 

  • No DOI oversight or protection
  • Not required to pay medical bills by law
  • More catastrophic in nature
  • Not required to cover the 10 essential health benefits of the ACA law
  • Not required to keep a reserve for expenses

 

Those are some critical ones in terms of how health sharing is structured.


They're also key to our question of whether health sharing plans are worth it.

 

You can learn more about health sharing plans versus health insurance here.

 

Basically, it means that if we are shopping this direction, we want to find the best of breed.

 

For this reason, we only deal with OneShare plans.

 

Items that make OneShare top choice:

 

  • Keeps reserve voluntarily for run on expenses
  • Uses large, nationwide PPO network
  • Priced appropriately for plan design
  • Most flexible in terms of eligibility and religious requirement
  • Does not decline based on health

 

You can learn why we think OneShare plans are the best health sharing options here.

 

So if we are going to look at the value of health sharing, we would start there.

 

Let's first rule out a few other considerations before getting to the heart of the question at hand.

 

First, make sure you don't qualify for a tax credit

 

This is the defining item with ACA or Obamacare plans in terms of cost and worth.

 

There are tax credits available based on income and size of household.


First check with your exchange or marketplace to see if this might available to you.

 

If so, that's going to be hard to beat with health sharing plans.


Especially if you're older.

 

The tax credits can easily bring down the cost to where health sharing plans are.


In that case, health sharing plans would not be worth it.


This assumes you're able to enroll (open enrollment or special enrollment trigger).

 

If not, health sharing or short term health plans might be your only option until you can enroll again.

 

What about health?


How does that figure into our calculation?

 

Next, look at health and pre-x

 

Health sharing plans are not required to cover what ACA plans cover.

 

They're generally more catastrophic in design.

 

This is similar to short term plans and what we had before 2014.

 

This may mean that they won't cover:

 

  • Maternity
  • Pre-existing conditions
  • Mental health and substance abuse treatment
  • Outpatient medications
  • Other first dollar expenses

 

If any of these are required, health sharing plans may not be a good fit.

 

Unless, of course, you're mainly concerned with new, catastrophic health issues.

 

Again, check out the health sharing plans versus ACA health plans.

 

Speaking of waiting periods...

 

Important info on health sharing waiting periods

 

With OneShare Standard plans, there are some key waiting periods.

 

It's important to understand this going in.

 

The short term health sharing plans and catastrophic plans may not have some of these waiting periods (all will have the pre-x waiting period).

 

Some people will get 2 months of short term or catastrophic to cover the initial waiting periods.

 

Once met, they then cancel the short term and keep the Standard plans.

 

Please send a request for the member's guide and we'll shoot that right over.

 

Now...to the question that brought you here.

 

Is it worth it to get health sharing plans

 

We're very conservative.


Again, we've seen plans come and go over a 20 year window.

 

For people who can't afford or qualify for ACA plans, we feel confident in OneShare (not the other health sharing plans).

 

We have enrolled 100's of people on OneShare plans with no issues.

 

The only negative feedback we had was that they were occasionally slow to pay providers.

 

To some extent, they will get pressure to improve that in order to maintain their PPO network contract so we feel confident that will improve going forward.

 

The are growing very fast right now which is very important (and good).


The more people we have in the "pool", the better to address run on expenses.

 

OneShare also keeps the 20% reserve which is critical.

 

We can't speak directly to whether a given company will pay for a specific claim.

 

Anyone who does is being dishonest or worst.

 

We can state that our interactions with OneShare to date have been positive.

 

Here's our plan going forward to help people determine if health sharing plans are worth buying.

 

Our reviews with health sharing plans and clients

 

We'll then post these results on this page and elsewhere on our site.

 

We have some initial responses already in and they're pretty positive (aside from the slowness to pay some expenses but ultimately, paying them).

 

To some extent, no news is good news.

 

Believe me, whether it's health insurance or health sharing plans, if there's a problem, we hear about it!

 

We're now into multiple renewals of OneShare with the vast majority of our clients and they are continuing with their plan.

 

Hopefully we addressed some questions on whether health sharing is worth it.

 

We only speak for OneShare health care sharing plans.

 

We have some pretty sizable issues with the other big 5 health sharing ministries.

 

  • Not using networks in some cases (you have to show a provider a card)
  • Not priced realistically (this never ends well and we're already seeing the rate increases)
  • Poor back-end plan design for bigger bills

 

Our main issue is this.

 

Many of the plans are priced such that eventually, there's going to be an issue paying expenses.


You don't want to be on other side of that.

 

We've seen it over the years.

 

If it's too good to be true....it's definitely not worth it!

 

Again, there is absolutely no cost to you for our services.  Call 800-320-6269 Today!