HR 3962 was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 7^th, but there is much more that will need to happen for this bill to become law.

First, the bill must next be approved in the U.S. Senate. For it to pass, it will have to overcome significant opposition and is unlikely to pass in its current form.

In addition, the current health care bill in the Senate, HR 3590, provides an exemption for members of health care sharing ministries.

Even if an unfavorable bill should eventually pass in the Senate, and then be approved by both houses, the requirement to purchase health insurance in the current legislation is not scheduled to take effect until 2013. That will give significant time to continue seeking exemptions and other legal protections.

We believe that there has never been a better time to be part of a health care sharing ministry, and this political development can be a good opportunity to tell fellow believers and unbelievers alike about the importance of putting our faith in God and not in a government. He is the only One Who can provide everything we need.

The health care “reform” process is far from over. There are still many ways for God to intervene. We need to continue depending on Him and taking action where we can.

It promises to be close.

We’re opposing it right now because it does not include protections for health care sharing ministries.  There are protections in the Senate Finance Committee bill, but we’re concerned about them surviving conference committee if they’re not in both bills.

So our members are praying this evening for the bill in its current condition to fail, so that it might come back with a better version for our ministries.

Health reform is necessary.  But it needs to happen without destroying the non-profit, non-insurance solutions that are already working.

More on Healthcare Sharing Ministries « The Enterprise Blog
Earlier, I wondered about the fate of private “Healthcare Sharing Ministries” such as Samaritan Ministries International under healthcare reform. I have now learned that these organizations are treated differently in different ObamaCare proposals floating around Congress. At the moment, there’s an exception for them in the “conceptual language” of the Baucus plan passed by the Senate Finance Committee.

A local Fox station did a piece on member ministry Medi-Share:

Holy alternative to health insurance
They’ve been around for 16 years but they say interest in what they do has increased as many folks are looking to opt out of regular insurance.

How it works is every month members pay into the program. Medi-Share matches those monthly payments with other members medical bills Medi-Share then pays those bills and alerts the families who paid into the plan.

And a Samaritan Ministries member writes an Op-ed in the Altavista, VA Journal:

WWW.WPCVA.COM
Nine years ago, in November of 2000, after several months of research, my wife Cathy and I decided to distance ourselves as far as possible from the health care train wreck. At that time, we joined a health care sharing ministry called Samaritan Ministries International, a group of 13,000-plus households representing about 44,000 people that have chosen to share their medical financial burdens.

Samaritan Ministries is just one of several such organizations that are estimated to include 100,000 in total. Since that November nine years ago, we’ve been blessed with good health, while at the same time we have joyfully helped others in need to the tune of about $30,000. Now Congress wishes to punish us for being prudent, responsible, healthy and compassionate.

As the specter of socialized health care evolved, it became painfully clear that there would be provisions to punish any that should choose to not participate in an approved health insurance plan. That means us.

We’re hopeful that media attention like this will serve our efforts to get an exemption in the final version of whatever health care reform bill comes through congress, similar to the language in the Senate Finance bill that passed committee earlier this week.

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

Thirty-Nine Fallacies About Health Care
1. “The quality of health care in America is ranked lower than 36 other countries.”

When you hear this, always ask, “Ranked by whom and how?” In 2000 United Nations bureaucrats at the World Health Organization sent a survey to “officials and experts” selected by the U.N. Why should we be surprised to learn that government “officials and experts” in France thought that their government-run health care system was the best in the world? The scoring of these surveys also made them meaningless. For example, 25 percent of the scoring was weighted based on the assessment of how “fair” the financing was in each country. For “fair,” read socialist—the list was largely a ranking of how socialist each country’s system is.

Richard Ralston has written 39 publicly repeated fallacies about health care, linked to above.   It’s worth a read, whether you’re for or against the current reform bills.

Debunking health care reform myths | GJFreePress.com
Myth No. 2: Opponents of Obamacare are “anti-health care reform.”

A recent article in the Huffington Post claims that “opponents of Democratic health care legislation” are “anti-health care reform,” which is nonsense.

The link above is to a good article on the myths about the opponents of the current health care reform proposals.  It’s worth a read.

HT:  Patient Power

Star Parker of CURE recently wrote about health care sharing ministries and how health reform may affect them.

Parker: Healthcare struggle is about freedon | ScrippsNews
About 100,000 Americans participate in private, voluntary Christian communities that take care of their own healthcare independently of government and insurance companies. They are called health sharing ministries.

These communities assess members “shares”, based on family size, which are paid monthly, in addition to annual dues.

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.