Health Care Cost-Sharing Programs: Medi-Share

Today, we finish up our series on health care cost-sharing programs that can be used to cover large, unforeseen expenses that HELPcare Clinic membership doesn't include.

Medi-Share, like Samaritan Ministries and Share HealthCare that we've covered here before, is a Christian health sharing ministry. This means that they require a Statement of Faith in order to be eligible for membership.

If you are comfortable affirming this Statement of Faith, keep reading to find out more details on their program! They offer a special membership to members of direct primary care clinics, like HELPcare Clinic, that may be the right choice for your family.

But if you can't, in good conscience, affirm these beliefs, you may want to consider Zion HealthShare, whom we wrote about last week.

A bit of history:

Medi-Share has been around since 1993 and they have over 400,000 members across all 50 states. This makes them one of the largest and longest lasting health-sharing programs on the market. Reviews say the process for sharing bills can be lengthy, ranging from 30-45 days, but they have shared over $1 billion in medical costs since their inception and have never failed to share an eligible bill over the last 30 years, which is quite a track record and good for peace of mind.

The details:

Let's start by defining a couple of the terms you'll need to know.

  • Monthly Share Amount (MSA): similar to an insurance premium, this is the portion you pay to share other members' eligible medical bills every month, and to be eligible to have your own unexpected medical bills shared.
  • Annual Household Portion (AHP): similar to a yearly deductible, this is the amount of money you are responsible to pay before any costs will be shared. AHPs range from $3,000–$12,000. The higher your AHP, the lower your MSA.

Medi-Share offers a variety of programs, but the one we want to highlight for HELPcare Clinic members is the Medi-Share Complete AHP 12000 plan. What may make this plan appealing to our members is the fact that up to $1,800 of your HELPcare Clinic membership dues can go towards meeting your $12,000 AHP. So with this plan, your AHP would effectively be $10,200.

Your MSA will vary depending on your age and number of members in your household. But for me, a married 28-year-old, the MSA would be $183. Click here to calculate your own MSA.

This post is only meant to serve as an introduction to Medi-Share. If you are interested in learning more about what is included in Medi-Share membership, I invite you to check out their website and read through their member guidelines.

Joe Aase

Joe is HELPcare's Finance Director. He lives in Hopkins, MN with his wife Amy.
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