Of late, there has been an explosion in the interest for healthsharing. The likely reason behind this is there is no penalty for not having health insurance any more. Healthsharing is NOT an insurance but like insurance there is a pool of money that members pay into. Instead of calling them premiums, healthshares call them ‘shares’. Even though they started as faith-based initiatives decades ago, healthsharing is available to all individuals regardless of faith today. Sedera health and Zion health provide healthsharing regardless of faith.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of healthsharing over health insurance? Big advantage is the monthly share is comparably quite less compared to insurance premiums and affordable to a majority of people. There are reasons why the monthly shares are less. Almost all the healthsharing do not cover pre-existing condition for the first two years. Some have a sliding scale coverage over a period of time. They make people work on their health proactively. Some of them increase the monthly amount if people don’t take care of their health. By all these measures, they keep the pool relatively healthy and thus are able to cut costs. Another big advantage is their administrative cost is quite less compared to health insurance companies.
Meridian Springs+Healthsharing = BFF
With membership in a DPC clinic like us, families get discounted rates on their healthsharing. With a DPC physician as a PCP, most of the health issues could be resolved in a primary care setting and it stop many unneeded expensive visits to ER/Urgent care/Specialists. Due to the saving DPC brings, healthsharing rates get further discounted. It is an over all win-win.
What are the disadvantages of healthsharing? Since it is not an insurance, there is no catastrophic coverage. That means, there is no cap on your out-of-pocket payment in case you land in a very bad health situation. So depending on your situation, you should explore if healthsharing is a good fit for your family.