Why I Don't Have Health Insurance
I have something better...
I have not had health insurance since I became a pastor in 2013. I never liked health insurance prior to that, but since it was provided by my employer, I used it while loathing it. When I went into the ministry I found that buying health insurance was expensive, and in most cases I would end up paying out of pocket anyway due to high deductibles and co-pays.
A friend of mine told me about Christians Healthcare Ministries (CHM) which is a health cost sharing program designed to help professing Christians share the cost of their major medical expenses. I found that it was much cheaper than traditional health insurance, and being a man who believes in the free market and personal responsibility, it was right up my alley.
I have been using CHM since 2013 and have been very happy with it. Being members of CHM, my wife and I are essentially self-payers, but we are self-payers with a lot of other like-minded people supporting us and helping us with our medical expenses.
With CHM, we shop around for medical care and find the best deals. Whatever discounts we get from medical providers for being self-payers go towards our out-of-pocket costs. In many instances when a major medical event occurs, we will end up paying nothing because the discounts we obtain will completely cancel out our portion of the bill. Let me explain.
An example
We have the Silver plan with CHM which is currently $125 per person per month. With this plan, we are responsible to pay $2,500 of the costs of a medical incident, and CHM will reimburse us for the rest of the cost. But here’s the great part. Let’s say one of us has to have a surgery which costs $10,000, and we obtain a 25% discount from the hospital for being self-payers. In this case the discount would turn out to be $2,500. That discount would be deducted from the $2,500 we are required to pay and would cancel it out completely, leaving us owing $0 for the surgery.
Freedom and flexibility
With CHM we can go to whatever doctor or hospital we choose. There are no “networks” that we have to stay in, and we do not have the headaches and frustrations of dealing with insurance companies. We also don’t feel like the money we pay to CHM for healthcare cost sharing is wasted because nearly every penny of it goes to help pay the medical expenses of other professing Christians who are like-minded when it comes to personal responsibility for their healthcare.
Try it out yourself
If you would like to look into CHM, you can do so here. If you have any questions about my experience with CHM, you can contact me on my contact page.
