Are you sick of paying insurance that covers treatments you disagree with? Do you want to get around paying for insurance as mandated by the ACA? Are you Christian?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then there is an alternative. All you have to do is sign a contract that begins, “If you are a committed Christian you do not have to violate your faith by purchasing government-approved health insurance.”
Oh, and live your life according to a certain definition of morality while abstaining from "general debauchery". That's no extramarital sex, binge drinking or illegal drugs. You are allowed a celebratory cigar to celebrate the birth of a child. Presumably mothers are allowed one too, but I can neither confirm nor deny.
The organization is called
Samaritan Ministries and it offers what the ACA considers a viable insurance alternative. Samaritan bills itself as a Biblical, non-insurance approach to health care needs and has around 37,000 members. Samaritan covers up to $250,000 per "need".
According to Samaritan Ministries member Gary Duff:
“Christians are just healthier people. Think of all the physical problems we can attribute to a sinful lifestyle.”
also
“Our bodies are temples. That’s how we treat them.”
Yes, I juxtaposed the biblical verse that Samaritan bases its ministry upon with Duff's quotes on purpose. I must read it differently than he does.
There are other healthcare sharing ministries in the country: Medi-Share in Florida and LibertyHealth Share and Christian Healthcare Ministries in Ohio. Advocacy groups put the number of Americans using this insurance substitute around 300,000.
There is little oversight of these organizations though. There was a case in the late 90s where leaders of one of the organizations embezzled $25 million.
This map shows the number of states with laws that explicitly protect the healthcare sharing ministries.
The Kentucky State Supreme Court issued an injunction against Medi-share in 2011 saying that the ministry needed to obtain a license from the state's insurance board.
The state passed a law allowing them to operate without such a license in 2013.
The concept of these organizations is pretty simple. To this not-a-lawyer, the ministries work just like insurance but the government sees it differently, apparently.
Members pool their resources together, sort of like an insurance pool but different, and promise to come to the aid of their fellows when in need.
There are also membership fees at Samaritan, kind of like premiums but different (somehow).
So its insurance but its different, at least according to the ACA which explicitly allows healthcare sharing ministries as an exemption.
Well, there is this difference that does make it not insurance. Members are responsible for their own bills and must then ask the healthcare sharing ministries for help. Of course there are rules and restrictions, like being under the "direction" of a minister and the aforementioned lifestyle restrictions. Also, too, you might get a quilt or a nice letter from fellow members. There is no actual guarantee that there will be help paying your bills.
But at least it ain't Socialism!