Medi-Share is a health insurance alternative offered by a company called Christian Care Ministry. This is a program for Christians who agree to a set of beliefs consistent with the Bible. It is not health insurance, but it does provide an exclusion for the legal requirement to have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In other words, if you become a member of Medi-Share, you won’t have to pay a penalty on your yearly taxes for not having health insurance.
I signed up for Medi-Share mainly to save money, after Cody was born. Cory’s employer provides health insurance for him, but to add me and Cody to the plan is rather expensive. After Cody was born, we kept him on the insurance until he finished up his infant vaccinations, and then we switched him over to Medi-Share. Our monthly “share,” which is similar to an insurance premium, costs about half of what we were paying for insurance, and saves us hundreds of dollars per month. It’s a great deal for us!
The drawback to this program is that fewer things are covered. For example, preventative care visits to the doctor are covered for children, but not teens or adults, and vaccinations are not covered at all. Prenatal care and birth are covered, however. For my family, the program provides what we need for a price we appreciate, but for other families this might be a problem. As with health insurance plans, you must meet a deductible, which is called an “Annual Household Proportion,” (AHP) before your bills will be eligible for sharing. And because the program is, again, not insurance, you aren’t legally entitled to anything by being a member. Your eligible bills are “shared” and paid for by other members, whose bills you help pay for with your own monthly share. Realistically, your eligible bills will always be paid, but it is important to realize there is technically no guarantee. It is a voluntary program of Christians coming together to share each other’s burdens—in the form of medical bills, of course.
Medi-Share offers several levels of AHPs, with the higher choices tied to lower monthly shares, similar to an insurance plan. If you pay $130 per month, your AHP might be something like $2,500. If you pay $60 per month, your AHP will be closer to $10,000. That means you have to pay your own eligible medical bills until you’ve paid the AHP, before other members will start paying your bills for you.
One of the best things about Medi-Share is that once you have three or more people on your family’s plan, the monthly share stays the same. That means you can pay about $375 per month for your family of three and that number will stay the same when you add another one, two, or more kids to your family. The AHP also applies to the whole family, so it’s not as if each member has to meet it before your bills are shared. One thing to note, however, is that your share increases by a small amount every year as you age. Mine went up by about $10 last year, for example.
Lastly, one of the best benefits of Medi-Share is free access to doctors 24/7 via an online system. That means I can “see” a doctor, for free, anytime, from my computer or phone. This service is for most non-emergency medical issues, and the doctors can even send prescriptions to your local pharmacy for you. It’s pretty cool!
If you are interested in checking it out, please use my referral link, here, so I can earn rewards. Then you can get a referral link of your own to share with all of your family and friends!
Disclaimer:
The information I have presented here is true to the best of my knowledge. Before signing up, you should read all of the information on https://mychristiancare.org/our-ministry/ and make sure that you understand all of the terms and conditions for yourself.
