Faith Based Health Care for Evangelical Christians – ABC News
When Scott and Rachel Kramer, gospel music makers from outside Peoria, Ill., discovered that their son, Weston, had autism, they spent $30,000 on early-intervention therapy.All of it was paid for by strangers — fellow Christians who sent checks, cards and prayers.

“Sometimes it was just a simple note saying even though we don’t know you, we want you to know that we are thinking of you and we are certainly going to pray for your son,” said Rachel Kramer.

Samaritan Ministries and their members, the Kramers, were featured in a piece last night on ABC World News.  Certainly we expect some reaction, both positive and negative, from the story.  Certainly the segment was much too short to really capture what we do as faith based, non-insurance alternatives.  The news segment certainly does not paint us in the best light, right up to and including the truncating (obviously a mid-sentence cut if you watch it) of my last statement about our methods for protecting our members and ensuring they understand the difference between health care sharing and health insurance.

Some brief thoughts of response to the piece:

• The story talked about a ministry who years ago had been accused of embezzlement.  All of the health care sharing ministries operating now have controls in place to prevent such a thing from happening.  The ministry in the report, Samaritan Ministries, has an elected board who oversee the budget and set salaries for officers.   All of the ministries in the Alliance have an external audit performed annually.
• It is true that there are no guarantees of payment.  That is part of the faith based nature of what we do, and why only people of faith are interested in them.  One doesn’t have to watch much of the news lately, though, to find story after story of where the “guaranteed” insurers are guilty of doing what their policy holder thought they shouldn’t, or guilty of not covering something the policy holder thought was covered.  Because we’re not concerned with policies and contracts our members share in burdens.  We are less concerned about what medical care you choose than how we can help you.  Samaritan Ministries has no consumer complaints filed in any state that they’re aware of, and has file drawers full of letters thanking them for the ministry they’re providing.  No one takes the time to send a thank-you note to an insurance company.  Again–we don’t believe this is for everyone, but it is one option that we’d like to see protected.
• When the reporter was out we spent a great deal of time talking about how the health reform bills could affect health care sharing.  I was surprised that none of that footage made it in to the segment.  We remain concerned about how those who are paying their bills without insurance will be affected by the proposed legislation, and are working to protect our members as the bills are completed.
• People on the internet are already abuzz about how this might work for some cases but not big ones.  All of the ministries have shared needs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single need, and are sharing millions of dollars in needs each month.

Lastly, remember that these ministries are already succeeding in providing charitable, health care help.  Samaritan does not turn away families based on health history.  They provide a sponsorship program to help families who cannot afford the very small share of $285 per month (less for couples and singles).  The membership in a health care sharing ministry is not tied to employment and so it is portable from job to job and from state to state.   Our members are excited about what we do, and they love us.  We’re providing a viable, unique service and helping people with tens of millions of dollars of health care expenses every year.

Please feel free to contact us through the comments or our member ministries’ sites that can be found here (at bottom of page).

Today I found out about another free clinic where a group of Christians, without government funding, are providing charitable health care for the poor.  The clinic doesn’t bill Medicaid for any services, and provides health care for local residents up to twice the Medicaid threshold.  You won’t be seeing anything about this on the news anytime soon, but there are options out there for the uninsured, and Christians are already out there doing the work of ministry for people around them!  I’d like to see this type of clinic in every major city in the USA–it’s time for the Church to take back charity, and to do it with our own dollars.

WORLD Magazine | CrossOver appeal | Emily Belz | Sep 26, 09
CrossOver gives the uninsured regular check-ups to keep them on medications for chronic illnesses, and that protects against more costly medical services down the road. “It costs pennies to save hundreds of dollars,” says Steve Lindsey, a former administrator at a local hospital who is now on the CrossOver board. CrossOver makes use of philanthropy from hospitals, backed up by charitable donations and a host of volunteers, to provide first-class care for free.

Find the CrossOver web site here.

It should be said that not all health insurers favor the individual and employer mandate.   But as the article here demonstrates why those of us who are in favor of patient centered reforms (instead of the government centered reforms being proposed) to replace the employer-centered model need to agree with our detractors:  the health insurers have not tried to solve the problem on their own, and they could have.  And in fact, they are a significant part of the problem and how we’ve gotten where we are.  Yet another reason why non-insurance options like health care sharing ministries should be reconsidered among the mix, at least as a protected (in the sense of still legal, not subsidized) option.  Other, working, patient centered options need to be protected and expanded as well, but here are some honest issues with the insurance industry in health care reform:

Timothy P. Carney: Down with the health insurers | Washington Examiner
Insurance companies lobby for big-government regulations, subsidies, mandates, and tax-code distortions that funnel them money, keep out competition, and stultify innovation. These policies preserve the employer-based health-care system that mocks the idea of free-market competition. Then they cry “unfair competition” when government threatens to encroach on their government-protected monopolies.

But they’re not just lobbying against a government option. Today, health insurers are lobbying to force you and me to buy their product or face a tax hike (the individual mandate).

They are lobbying to force entrepreneurs to buy insurance for employees (the employer mandate). They are lobbying for more subsidies paid for by us taxpayers. In short, they are lobbying against regular people and against the free market.

The insurers’ lobbyists stood on stage with Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi in 2007 calling for the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan to cover adults and middle-class children–an unreasonable expansion Democrats used as a political cudgel against Republicans.

They also benefit from an absurd tax break–the exclusion on employer-provided health benefits that drags down wages, shifts money into their industry, increases the deficit, and dries up the individual insurance market where actual competition could take place.

HT:  Brian Schwartz

Star Parker, president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education, hits the mark when she writes that the health care struggle is really about freedom.

Following up on the president’s recent conference call with an ecumenical collection of people of faith, she laments: “So those whose fight for individual freedom are immoral and our moral champions are those who want to extend the heavy hand of government.”  She then points to a group of 100,000 Americans “that take care of their health care indepently of government and insurance companies.”  As mentioned previously at this sight by Paul Hsieh and John LaPlante, “care without insurance” or government involvement is very doable and very inexpensive.

Parker’s article also reminds me of an excellent speech given by former majority leader Dick Armey, last November, at a conference hosted by Greg Scandlen with Consumers for Health Care Choices.  Armey cautioned the audience that the health care debate was not about health care or health insurance reform.  He said it was really about freedom: freedom of choice in health care and health insurance.

So when Obama and his supporters start attacking opponents of his massive debacle of health care and insurance reform, remember that he’s attacking freedom-loving Americans, those who would rather choose their own health care and their own medical payment arrangement rather than have Big Brother in Chief and his minions tell us what we should have.

Judd Gregg gives health reform a go – Carrie Budoff Brown – POLITICO.com
“I stepped back one week and said, ‘Let’s hold it. What would I do if I could do what I thought was most effective?’” Gregg said in an interview. “I was just saying to myself, ‘What would I do if I had a magic wand?’ I sat back and thought about the ideal.”Gregg’s proposal is built on a pledge to make sure that every American obtains a minimum standard of insurance; such a standard would aim to provide “peace of mind” by covering a major medical event and preventive health services, the lawmaker said.

This is another proposal from the GOP side of the aisle that includes a mandate of some sort (everyone should have some form of insurance).  There are a lot of ways to handle health care without insurance, health care sharing ministries being one way, and Senator Gregg will hopefully notice us and others along the way.

The whole confusing of insurance coverage with health care access in the sphere of rhetoric doesn’t make this easier, and we’ll keep trying to make our voice known.  Senator Gregg, give us a call and we’ll show you how over 100,000 Americans are paying their own health care bills through a community, non-profit, non-insurance ministry.

More insurance isn’t the answer here–more freedom and more choices will bring the changes we want in price and access.

HT:  Ryan Ellis.  (via Twitter)

U.S. group finds insured paying more for uninsured | Markets | Markets News | Reuters
U.S. families with health insurance are paying an estimated $1,017 more in annual premiums to compensate providers for healthcare to the uninsured, a report released on Thursday said. The report by Families USA, a healthcare reform advocacy group, said doctors, hospitals and other health providers try to recover the cost of uncompensated care by increasing charges for those with private insurance.

Note four things about this study and article:

1. no mention of the overpriced services paid for by the uninsured who paid their bills (3 to 5x what insured pay for same)
2. no mention of government entitlement cost shifting which dwarfs this shift $10 for ever $1.
3. note that the study is performed by Families USA a well known advocate of government run health care.
4. there is also no mention of the cost of insurance being driven up by overconsumption by the insured, which also dwarfs any cost shifting from the uninsured.

The uninsured aren’t the problem. The government entitlements that are out of control are driving the costs, and employer provided insurance further complicates the mess. Don’t give more of it to the government.

For more on the non-problem of the uninsured, see John Graham’s excellent article, Don’t Blame the Uninsured.

Got Insurance? | Newsweek Key Healthcare Issues | Newsweek.com
How many people would be insured under McCain ‘ s proposals, compared to today?
My colleagues and I have predicted that around 21 million people in the first year would lose access to health insurance because their employers would stop offering it. About 21 million higher-income people would take the tax credits and buy their own insurance. So it would be a wash in the first year. We worry that within five years, more employers would stop offering insurance, and we’d end up with more people uninsured than there are now.

Newsweek weighs in here on the presidential candidates and the issues of universal coverage.  The first thing to note is that they’re continuing the fallacy that access to health care and insurance are the same thing.  Secondly, they’re preying on fear with little fact.  See the quote above:  the first year of McCain’s plan is a wash concerning the uninsured.  But since they think (and probably rightly so) that more employers will drop group coverage, they therefore assume that the number of uninsured will go up.  And they have no basis or even models to make that claim.

And as I’ve noted before, being uninsured is not the problem.  Health care sharing ministries are among several non-insurance approaches to health care, and the members of HCSMs are doing just fine, albeit handicapped by the rising costs due to so many third party payers.   If we would tone down the rhetoric and stop overreacting due to fear, we’d realize that universal coverage isn’t the goal.  The goal is more choices, and more affordable choices in health care.  And having more consumer directed and more non-insurance based options will help drive the costs down.

Will Concierge Medicine Solve Our Primary Care Crisis? – Dr. Steven Knope
The reason for the primary care shortage is obvious. Young doctors coming out of medical school will simply not tolerate the abuse from third-party payers and Medicare bureaucrats that their predecessors endured. It’s just not worth it. In reality, most medical students could not even afford to enter primary care, even if they wanted to. Reimbursement for primary care doctors is simply too low to repay the average medical school debt. As one family practice physician said to me this week at the American Association of Family Practice meeting in San Diego, “The only people who are going into primary care medicine now are those with a ‘religious, do-gooder’ mentality, or those at the bottom of the medical school class. You’d have to be an idiot to go into primary care under the current third-party payer system.’” Chew on that one for a while.Concierge medicine and free market forces may right the system over time. As the need for good internists becomes more apparent to the public, the market will force change, as more and more patients become willing to pay primary care physicians for their valuable services. With an increase in demand, more medical students will enter primary care to fill the market need as they realize that they can make a living in primary care medicine. This retooling, however, will take decades to accomplish. In the mean time, patients will suffer. Many will be forced to see nurse practitioners, or physician assistants instead of fully-trained diagnosticians. Even if half of all medical students opted for primary care over the next couple of years, there would be a lead time of 10-15 years before we will have trained enough doctors to take care of our aging population.

Here’s a good post from an author of a book on concierge (or retainer based) medicine, hypothesizing that concierge medicine just might encourage more doctors to try primary care.  He’s not making any predictions, mind you, but this may be one way that young students can see paying off medical school loans while still not flooding the specialist markets.  I think it’s a good theory, and I really like the options this model gives us.  One great feature is a true return to the doctor-patient relationship unencumbered by third party politics.   And something like this combined with an HSA or a HDHP or, even better, a health care sharing ministry could be a way to keep consumers directing their own health care.

Scariest Hospital Risks – Page 1 – MSN Health & Fitness – Health Topics
The mistakes aren’t exactly minor, either. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people die every year because of shoddy handiwork, including surgical mishaps and drug mix-ups.

The article goes on to say that another 100,000 people die from hospital infections that were preventable.  That’s 140,000-200,000 people who die each year from seeking medical care.

In the public policy realm we often hear about the thousands (the estimate they throw out, but can’t prove is 18,000)  that die from not having health insurance.  Statistically, 85% of this 140,000 (I’ll use the low end) probably have insurance.  That’s still over 100,000 deaths to the insured from seeking medical care.  I would guess that most of this 140,000 have insurance, and that’s why they’re receiving medical care.  (If they’re not insured and receiving care, that then says the problem isn’t so big as they make it to be).

Insurance and health are not the same thing.  And 100% of people die.  And whether someone has insurance or not, they can die because they don’t seek medical care quickly enough.  It’s time to stop saying that the uninsured are more likely to die.

Non-insurance approaches like health care sharing ministries bridge the gap for many people, including people who are among our poorer citizens.  And those solutions need to be given a better look, rather than continuing in the misconception that insurance and access to care are synonymous.