Brynna One of our most popular posts has been where we shared an explanation of and our experience with healthcare sharing ministries. (You can read that here) We spent many years with Samaritan Ministries before switching to Christian Healthcare Ministries for cost reasons.
However, we’ve recently decided to switch BACK to Samaritan, and because I talk a lot about this option as an alternative to traditional health insurance, I want to share our reasons for changing. There have been some fairly significant changes since my last post on this topic and this will be my effort to bring that all up to date.
We chose to switch from Samaritan to CHM initially because CHM offered a “tiered” membership program, so I was able to put different units of our family (myself, my husband, and my children = three units) at appropriate sharing levels (read: “coverage” levels). Because my husband had insurance through work, we had him on the Bronze plan which was significantly cheaper, while the children and I were on Gold. In comparison, Samaritan, which at that time only had one plan (whereas now they offer their Classic plan as well as a less expensive Basic option), required us all to be on the same level at a higher cost. (Keep in mind that our family rarely incurs medical expenses, so participating in healthcare sharing is not something we intend to rely on for regular use.)
In 2023, Christian Healthcare Ministries (CHM) made some significant changes to their membership plans. In a nutshell, I described it as moving more toward a traditional “deductible” style…and we weren’t a huge fan of it. Doing so greatly reduced the incentive for members to work to get their medical bills reduced (via Fair Pricing and cash pay discounts). The change is probably great for people who share bills regularly. For a family like ours who works hard to NOT have bills to share, the change was not good. It required- at all levels of membership, including the highest, Gold- a lot more out of pocket and less in return, as well as dramatically altering their maternity sharing guidelines. And to top it off, monthly costs raised and they made it VERY confusing for most members, even those with a lot of healthcare sharing experience. (I’d planned to share the contrast, bu it is difficult to find the comparison of previous vs 2023 changes now that they’re in effect, my links to the information no longer exist and just direct to the CHM homepage)
So, what did we switch to? We chose to return to Samaritan Ministries and enroll in their “Basic” plan. I still firmly believe (especially after utilizing both programs for maternity and an additional non-maternity related need) that Samaritan is the “premium” option within healthcare sharing, based on how the operate and the overall costs/reimbursement. We chose Basic, even though it “covers” less (we pay the first $1500 and then 10%), combined with Save to Share for catastrophic events, because after so many years, we’ve learned what our predictable medical expenses will be…and they’re few and far between. But the savings we have each month allow us to put that into an account to cover our personal responsibility expense and beyond. (As well as pay for unsharable events)
For numbers, we were paying $626 a month for CHM- two gold units and one bronze (including Brothers Keeper), and our Personal Responsibility was $1000. Now we are down to $360.25 a month (includes Save to Share) for $1500 PR. Granted, it’s only 90% sharable after that, but the savings for us each month are more than worth it. I also am very excited to be returning to sending our monthly share directly to another person. I missed that!
I hope that helps explain (or at least begin to explain) why I no longer stand by my CHM recommendations in my previous healthcare sharing post, although it’s still an great way to better understand how healthcare sharing works vs traditional insurance.
If you are interested in signing up for Samaritan Ministries and interested in using my name (Brynna Smith) as a referral, our family would be very grateful and we get a small credit on one month. Just enter “Brynna Smith” on the appropriate line of the application, found here.
