For some Christians, sharing medical bills is a godly alternative

Not sure what the author means here? All this is, is a group health insurance policy. How does the author think insurance companies operate? Members pay into an account, when you need payment for health related services, the health insurance pays that bill out of a pool of money. The concept being that there are enough healthy people paying into it than unhealthy (in terms of costs) and when the health payments exceed a threshhold, your premiums go up (hence everyone pays more to help those in the policy). This is just a non-traditional medical policy, but an insurance plan all the same.

It’s the basic definition of insurance: “Insurance is the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another in exchange for payment. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss.”

It’s not wise to insure against something is low risk of experiencing.

My own take is that the Christian medi-share plans don’t have a large enough pool of contributors to mitigate risk of catastrophic loss (say a very severe spinal or head injury)

[Jim]

It’s the basic definition of insurance: “Insurance is the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another in exchange for payment. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss.”

It’s not wise to insure against something is low risk of experiencing.

My own take is that the Christian medi-share plans don’t have a large enough pool of contributors to mitigate risk of catastrophic loss (say a very severe spinal or head injury)

I would have to disagree with the statement, “It is not wise to insure against something is low risk of experiencing.” There are two reasons to take insurance. There is a high chance of occurrence, and also if the occurrence (even if remote) could be highly devastating. A person who is very healthy has an extremely low risk of death, yet most people with families are wise to purchase term-life insurance. As a result, it is reflected in the rate from the insurance companies, where most healthy young parents can purchase $1 Million life insurance for less than $750/yr. It is wise to purchase it, not because so many young parents are dying, but because the consequence can be quite devastating (i.e. leaving a young family with no source, or limited source of income).

I have no problem with people using these options…but they do need to be aware of the limitations. As has been mentioned, most of these medi-share plans do not have unlimited coverage or sufficient resources to pay out significant claims. It is not uncommon for cancer treatments to average $1,000,000/yr. How many Christians families does it take to raise $1,000,000?

Most families would definitely be better off paying for a major-medical policy and saving money into a health savings account to cover the small stuff.

Samaritan Ministries is a well known provider of medi-share plans. They do exactly what a health insurance company does except for several key differences 1) They market themselves as a biblical solution 2) Their costs are high for singles and proportionately lower for larger families 3) They do not guarantee full payment of costs 4) They have a very small pool of people to draw premiums from—this increases the risk that a catastrophic event would severely impact the ministry 5) Their oversight is private rather than public or regulatory except for an annual audit 6) They do not build up real reserves–this is kind of like living paycheck-to-paycheck. 6) They make a big deal about their operating expenses (1 mo’s share [9.2% of premium] ); but health insurance companies are required by law to have less than 15% of premiums as operating expenses. That does not equate to big difference when that 5.8% is the difference between having full coverage of unlimitedly large bills and low coverage of any and all bills.

Is it possible (and encouraged if so) for folks in medi-share plans to purchase catastrophic insurance for things like cancer?