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.

‘Medi-Share’ a Bible-based Health Care Option – Health & Science – CBN News – Christian News 24-7 – CBN.com

Here’s a link to the video:

Breaking News | Latest News | Current News – FOXNews.com

James Lansberry (that’s me) will be on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning (10/1) at about 6:45am EDT talking about Samaritan Ministries and health care sharing ministries.  A Samaritan Ministries family will be on the following morning.  Tune in and watch!

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.

One reason why we’re concerned about the expansion of government health care is that occasionally decisions are made that compromise our commitment to life.  Here’s one such story from England:

Premature baby ‘left to die’ by doctors after mother gives birth just two days before 22-week care limit | Mail Online
Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

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