Crunchy Stewardship

Stewarding Health Costs: Understanding Alternatives to Traditional Insurance

• Katie Jones • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this episode of the Crunchy Stewardship podcast, cousins Chrissy Rombach and Katie Jones discuss the high costs of healthcare and methods to manage these expenses effectively. They explore traditional health insurance, explaining premiums, copays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums. They highlight issues within the system, such as the rising costs influenced by both providers and insurance companies. They introduce alternative healthcare strategies, focusing on non-traditional health insurance options like Christian Healthcare Ministries and Crowd Health. The episode covers their personal experiences with these health cost-sharing programs, emphasizing their benefits, such as significant discounts for self-pay patients and no network restrictions. The cousins also touch on the necessity of a mindset shift towards investing in preventative care and managing catastrophic health events. They conclude with a teaser for the next episode, which will delve deeper into the specifics of various health-sharing companies.


Key takeaway: 

This Crunchy Stewardship episode reveals that while traditional health insurance in the U.S. is costly and often misaligned with consumer interests, health cost-sharing ministries offer a budget-friendly, faith-centered alternative. These ministries concentrate on covering significant medical events, encouraging individuals to invest in their preventative health through self-pay options and direct provider relationships, rather than relying on a system that often prioritizes profit over patient well-being.


Links: 


Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship
01:20 Introduction to Today's Topic: Paying for Health
02:29 Understanding Health Insurance Basics
06:12 The Economics of Healthcare Costs
07:31 Exploring Non-Traditional Health Insurance
08:38 Personal Experiences with Health Cost Sharing
15:23 Challenges and Benefits of Non-Traditional Healthcare
42:10 Conclusion 

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Chrissy:

Hello and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship My name is Chrissy Rombach.

Katie:

And my name is Katie Jones. We are two cousins who are passionate about learning and sharing knowledge to equip others to steward their spiritual, mental, emotional, financial, and physical health to honor God in every aspect of their lives.

Chrissy:

In this podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resources that God has given us. We will look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health, and tons more through a natural lens and with a biblical foundation.

Katie:

Before we dive into today's episode, if you have been following along and enjoying this podcast, make sure you are one subscribed, and two, make sure to go and leave us a five star rating wherever you are listening to this. This really helps other people to find our show in the future. And if you aren't already signed up for our weekly newsletter, take a moment right now. Pause and go and do that by clicking the link in the show notes below. Uh, we send out tips through our newsletter as well as keep you updated on new episodes that come out weekly. So go ahead and do that now.

Chrissy:

Today's episode, we're kind of shifting gears a little bit and turning an eye towards how do we effectively pay for our health? Because health is expensive. Let's be real. Anytime anybody goes to the hospital or has any sort of significant, not primary care event happen to them, it can get a little bit pricey. And so we're just gonna face that reality today of health is not cheap and it's one of those things that we have to prepare for both financially and spiritually and emotionally and mentally too. So we have to prepare for these. So we're gonna talk a little bit on ways that we can prepare for health crises today. And also methods that both the United States and private companies have put into place to help us pay for these things. So we're gonna talk about health insurance, how health insurance works exactly And then also alternative non-traditional health insurance type things that you can use to also help pay for your health costs. So starting off, we're just gonna give like a blanket overview of what is health insurance, how does it work, and what does it do for you? So health insurance originally started as a means by which the United States could help their people pay for health costs. Just because health is expensive health crises are expensive. So health insurance was originally created to help the people be able to pay for their healthcare. The way it essentially works is each month. A person pays what's called a premium, which is a set amount of money they pay towards their health insurance company to say, okay, if I get sick, you are gonna cover me. And so for my premium, for example, is$344 each month we pay two our health insurance company in order for them to protect us when we get sick. So there are premiums you pay every month. In addition to that, there are what's called copays, which is a set number that you pay whenever you go to a normal health thing. They have set numbers for primary care, specialty care, urgent care, and emergency room visits. So if you go to either of those, you're going to pay a copay, and then usually the health insurance company says that they will cover the rest of whatever care was needed during that visit. In addition to that, they have what's called a deductible. So a deductible is how much you will pay towards your healthcare each year until the insurance company starts chipping in pretty much. So essentially the idea is you cover the first. say,$10,000 of care that you receive in a year, and after you hit$10,000 worth of care that you have received, then the insurance company will start paying a percentage of the costs thereafter. With that, there is also an out of pocket maximum that a person will pay each year. It can be a lot of money that a person could pay maximum each year out of pocket. So say maybe$20,000. If you think about$20,000 a year, year over year, over year for chronic illnesses, that is incredibly expensive. And health insurance companies know this now. They, only allow you to pay up to your maximum out of pocket expense. And then they will cover 100% thereafter. So they say. When a person signs up for traditional health insurance, they are given an outline of the things that their health insurance company will or will not pay for upfront. For instance, a health insurance company may pay for regular annual checkups. Or, treatment at an OB's office, but fertility care, maybe not. Additionally, they might pay for primary care visits or regular testing that you get done every single year, preventative care. But if you wanna get a test for something that you think might be going on, but isn't necessary, the health insurance company likely will not pay for that test So often what happens is a doctor will have to get a test or a procedure approved by the health insurance company in order to do it, because the health insurance company is the one that is going to be paying unless the patient wants to pay for a test or a procedure out of pocket, which for most patients is incredibly expensive and very difficult to do. Now, one of the biggest problems with health insurance and healthcare in general as to why the cost is going up so much is because, you know healthcare providers such as doctors, hospitals, things like that, they are the provider of the service, right? And unfortunately, the people actually benefiting from the service is not the consumer. The consumer is the insurance company. And so if we think about general economics, you know, if both the provider of the service and the consumer of the service wants the cost of the service to go up, the service is going to go up. That is just the nature of it. And in this situation. That is the truth. Both the provider of the service and the consumer both want the cost to go up, because when that happens the person actually receiving the services pays more money towards both entities, and so that has become one of the biggest problems with healthcare, why it has become so incredibly expensive because everybody who's involved in whether or not a procedure is done wants the cost of the procedure to go up because they make more money off of it. And so this is where we can look into non-traditional healthcare strategies It's, it's very unwise to not have any form of health coverage because when a person goes to the hospital without any form of health insurance or non-traditional health insurance, then they will walk outta the hospital facing an astronomical bill no matter what. But there are alternative health insurance strategies that have been implemented, that are available to the public, that can be used to create a more affordable method to acquiring healthcare. And Katie, I know you've been using a non-traditional healthcare method for many years, and you're actually thinking about transitioning to a different non-traditional healthcare method, would you be able to just go through and kind of explain what exactly a non-traditional health insurance strategy entails and how it can be better or worse for you? Like the pros and cons of it, as you have experienced through using it.

Katie:

Yeah, so we actually switched to a health cost sharing ministry back in, I think it was 2021. And it was a little bit for a few different Yeah. So when we turned 26,'cause that's when you typically get off of your parents' health insurance. Wes and I, when we got married, we were both on our parents'cause we got married when we were 24 and eventually a couple years later, so that would've been, yeah, right before 2020 was that year. And we just went to the, healthcare marketplace, whatever, just looked into whatever health insurance was out there because, I started working as an entrepreneur, so I didn't have health insurance through an employer and then Wes at the church that we were at, did not have health insurance through them, and so we just didn't know what we were doing, and we got some just traditional health insurance. We never really ended up using it very much in general because we're pretty healthy people and it was costing us a lot. I actually, I, I don't have the numbers in front of me. I probably should pull them up. I actually did a review back in 2021 or 2022. My first review of our health cost sharing ministry, and I talked about like the breakdown of the costs for like how much we actually have been saving now that we switched to a health cost sharing ministry. And that was the, the main reason we switched was it was just costing us so We, We were barely using it and it was a high deductible and we were just kind of like, you know, this is, I just. I feel like there's something better out there. And I had started hearing about different cost sharing ministries out there and did some research and I was like, I'll try it out. So I actually switched myself first. I jumped over, Wes stayed on traditional health insurance for a while kind of tested it out, and I actually went through and used it all for, um, my meniscus repair and everything got covered and it worked really great and I was like, this is what working out fantastically. And so we switched Wes over as well. And so we actually, we use Christian Healthcare Ministries and we've been with them now since 21. And we've really been enjoying them. They've been really wonderful. One of my favorite things is obviously they are faith-based, but Christian is in their name and that means that they decide the types of medical events, like medical incidents and stuff that get covered need to align with of like their biblical principles that they have set before them and for members. That they need to align to. And we've actually really, really appreciated that. There's some things that people don't agree with, and I think that is okay. They don't cover, like if get, pregnant out of wedlock, they will not share the medical, expenses for that pregnancy because you did not adhere to a you know, biblical lifestyle that they, you know, you have to sign a covenant basically before you join Christian Healthcare Ministries saying you're not going to partake in these kinds of things. But if you do, then those expenses are not going to be shared if, if you have them. And I actually really appreciate And because health cost sharing like ministries and programs like this, because they're not traditional health insurance, they don't need to cover all the things that Obamacare now says that we have to cover in health insurance. And because of that, they're able to keep the monthly kind of like premiums. They're not necessarily called premiums.'cause again, it's not health insurance. In Christian Healthcare Ministries, they the monthly share amount. It's like how much you share into the ministry. And so because they don't cover all the things, it helps keep our monthly share amount, much lower. This is different per medical cost sharing program, because Medi-Share is one of the more popular ones out there, they actually align a little bit more closely to how traditional health insurance works with having copays and deductibles and a network that you have to work with for providers. Whereas with Christian Healthcare Ministries, we don't have copays. We have something similar to a deductible, but it's much lower and it has to meet certain requirements and stuff. And I on on our plan, it's actually 1,250, so that's kind of like our quote unquote deductible. And we're on Gold plan, which is the more expensive one. And so like they're almost their high deductible plan, I'm using quotes here$6,000 per year kind of would have to pay per year for incidents and stuff.

Chrissy:

You, you're saying that the highest level that they have has. A$6,000 deductible

Katie:

The lowest, so their bronze plan has the highest but their gold plan, which is what we're on, is Like the lowest deductible, but it's the highest monthly premium

Chrissy:

got it. That's what I was saying. So high monthly premiums with low deductibles or low monthly premiums with high deductibles,

Katie:

Yes, and that's kind of like the whole point of health insurance and everything you have to consider like the deductible that you are willing to take. And I'm using the word deductible just as a general blanket term because most of us understand what a deductible kind of is. But again, with these health cost sharing programs, it's not exactly a deductible. It's very similar to, but there's few quirky differences that I go into in some of my YouTube videos, if anybody wants to dive into like Christian Healthcare Ministry specifically, I'm trying to keep it as general as possible if you're looking into other programs. But you know, you kind of think about, what risk am I willing to take when it comes to my health expenses? So if you do have a large medical event, do you have an emergency fund set aside to pay for a higher deductible? When we, like earlier on, we actually did do that, and we did do the higher deductible because I'm like, okay, we don't have as much risk and we have this money set aside for the deductible if anything were to happen for our car insurance, we actually a, a pretty high deductible'cause I'm like, cars are paid off and so I'm like, if anything happens, we just. Pay the deductible and we, it's fine'cause we have the money set aside to pay for that kind of an emergency. But, there are a lot of benefits. One of the big things that I have come to really, really love with Christian Healthcare Ministries and some of the other cost sharing programs out there do this, is that they do not have a network that you have to work with. So you get to choose which provider you go to. So you could pick like the best person for whatever your need is. So if you have cancer and you want to see the best doctor to help you treat that, you can go to that doctor it, you don't have to worry about them being in network or not. And, and that's really something that we've actually appreciated and in simple ways because when Wes had his ankle surgery, I sent him to the same orthopedic place that I went to for my meniscus a few years before that. And then I didn't have to worry about whether our physical therapist was in network. I just picked the closest one that I thought was the greatest. Um, And so that way it was like only two minutes from my house, and I didn't have to worry whether they were a network because when you're a part of a cost sharing program, you're actually considered a self-pay patient and, and I know that some people get really freaked out about that because they're like, oh, well then I have to pay everything outta pocket. And what if they don't pay? We've been with CHM and have had a lot of different medical events at this point, and everything that qualifies for sharing has been shared and we have gotten the reimbursements back for those expenses. And we have had no problems with it. Now we have had a few medical events that do not technically qualify for sharing, but we knew that ahead of time going into it and we knew, well, this is just something that's gonna be out of pocket for us. So it's a little of like a mentality switch, We've, we've really come in America to believe that health insurance just pay for all of our health expenses no matter what they are. And so because of that, we feel very entitled when we go to, like the doctor and we're like, well, this needs to be paid for and this needs to be paid for, and my labs and this, and blah, blah, blah. But, we think of our health in that sense, I've had friends who are like, oh, well, I would really like to get this looked at, but my health insurance gonna get pay for it, so I'm just not gonna go do that. And I'm like, what if you could be critically ill and you have no idea just because you just don't wanna pay for it yourself out of pocket. It's like we've lost the sense of going to the doctor or going to any kind of provider. It, like, you wanna think of it as like a preventative Like Your like quality of life could be better if you actually get these things taken care of and it needs to be an investment into yourself and your future even to go and take care of these things versus throwing it off because my health insurance isn't gonna pay for this. And so you know, we've been going like the acupuncturist lately we go to the chiropractor, we go to all these different people and CHM doesn't pay for those things, but I know that it's an investment into our health, so that way we won't get sick and won't need to go to the hospital and won't need to have all these chronic illnesses. And so it's just a mentality shift that I think country really, really needs.

Chrissy:

I I also wanna touch on that a little bit. You mentioned in-network versus out-of-network doctors and you know, I live in North Carolina. There's A lot very large health providing companies here in this part of the state. And so it's actually really unfortunate because if there is a specialist at a different entity who is like the number one specialist in the United States, I am not able to go to that specialist because my health insurance is provided through the entity that I work for. And so because I work for a hospital, they only cover doctors in network through the health.

Chrissy (3):

system I work for so if the number one neurosurgeon is in a different health system and I need a neurosurgeon, now, I don't need a neurosurgeon. But if this ever happened, that would be really unfortunate because I would not have access to the best neurosurgeon in the United States, even though they're only a 15 minute drive away from me. And so. That is one of the things that's like really hard to kind of wrap your head around of whether or not a doctor is in network or out of network and being able to go to whichever provider you would like. Another thing that I actually found interesting about my traditional healthcare is, they did not cover my chiropractor.

Chrissy:

And so I decided to start going to a chiropractor because of back pain. Due to the nature of my job being a nurse. You know, it happens and my insurance, did not cover the chiropractor, but at the same time, so I, I am now a patient paying out of pocket at my chiropractor's office, but the amount that I'm paying out of pocket. For each appointment is less than my copay would have been if I used my health insurance to pay for my chiropractor. And I've also heard it's very similar with, getting ultrasounds during pregnancy. If you decide you want a 3D ultrasound for your baby, you pay significantly less money if you decide to pay out of pocket for this procedure, rather than allowing the health insurance company to pay for the procedure, or if the health insurance company says they won't cover it, you know? And so, I've also heard the same about the use of an ambulance if you do not have health insurance. The cost of an ambulance is significantly cheaper than if you do have health insurance because the health insurance companies want the cost to be higher because then they get paid more. And so it, it's just, it's kind of like a, a backwards thought. And so Katie, yeah, I think you're very right in that we need to shift our understanding of how health is paid for in America because traditional health insurance is not a catchall for the costs. Like they say, they cover 80% of the costs, but me paying 20% of$2,000 is still more than me paying 100% of$100. You know, and that's the kind of cost difference that we're talking about here. For these situations.

Katie:

Wes' ankle surgery, so as a self-pay patient, we get all of the itemized bills from our providers and whenever we go to the provider, we tell them, Hey, we're self-pay. Do you offer any self-pay discounts? And in almost a hundred percent of the cases, they offer significant reductions in the bills. So I actually have the numbers in front of me, Wes' bills before any of the discounts. This is total for everything. This is going to the emergency room.'cause he, his situation was, uh, he fell from a roof and so we went to the ER for that. And then it was all the, like getting the MRI and, and going for all the follow-up appointments and then the actual surgery that he had and the physical therapy. So everything total was$112,000. A little bit over. After the discounts, it was$22,000, so that's almost$90,000 in discounts alone. So we sent all of these bills to Christian Healthcare Ministries to then be shared amongst the ministry. Out of pocket we only paid a thousand dollars, so kind of at the time our shareable kind of quote unquote deductible, like that was our personal responsibility is what it's called. And so it

Chrissy:

So because Of Your Christian healthcare ministries, you paid out of pocket 1% of your entire healthcare bill. Also can we just acknowledge the fact that a broken ankle requiring surgery costs a hundred thousand dollars?

Katie:

Yeah, it was, I mean, again, it every every single bill, like like the x-rays and the follow-ups and physical therapy. So it's everything. And I

Chrissy:

But still.

Katie:

But the physical therapy appointment alone, so have, I, I have spreadsheets of this stuff. Just a single appointment before self-pay discounts was$430. And then every time Wes would pay only$95 of that. So he'd pay$95,$95 each time he'd go and we'd submit the bills and then get a check in the mail from Christian Healthcare Ministries for those things.

Chrissy:

I'm gonna be real, I promise you. Those physical therapists are not getting paid$400 an hour. They're not getting paid$95 an hour.

Katie:

Yeah. And then, so here I've heard so many instances. I don't have personal experience with this, but after listening to reviews on YouTube or just hearing other podcast episodes, I've I've literally heard stories of people who, am. the ambulance ride actually is a really good example. I think I heard this on a podcast the other day where somebody had an ambulance ride and it was going to be like, they got a bill in the mail after their insurance paid for things, they were responsible for$800. And so they fought it and they're like, Hey, why is this ambulance ride still$800 and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry. We actually realized that we didn't put your insurance in here properly. We'll run it through your insurance again and send you the bill. And so they're like, great, thank you so much. Well, a month or so later, they get another bill in the mail from the ambulance company, and it's now higher. Then it the$800 and they're like, Hey, what's going on? I thought you were gonna send this to the insurance company. They're like, oh, well we did. This is now your responsibility after insurance is paid and it costs them more. And same thing like people go to physical therapy like that.

Chrissy:

And then the question goes to show, well, can I choose to not use my insurance to cover this? And the answer is no, because you have now identified that you have an insurance, plan that covers your ambulance ride. And so therefore you must use the insurance plan that quote unquote covers your ambulance ride even though their coverage still results in you paying more for the ambulance ride.

Katie:

It seriously, is so, like, like the system is broken. We really have gotten to this place where again, both the provider and the insurance company benefit from the cost going up. And then we as the consumer of these health expenses, health, products, basically, we are the ones footing the bill for all of this, and they all just benefit from us staying sick. And I hate to say it sometimes because I have so many friends similar to you that are, that are providers, they are nurses, they're doctors, they're surgeons, dentists, like. I have friends who are in these industries and I would never say that Chrissy herself is looking for me to stay sick or that any of my friends are wanting me to stay sick. I just don't think that they realize a lot of times like what's going on with the insurance companies and everything, and when people start to recognize that, they realize the corrupt system that they are sort of a part of. And we had a friend who, you know, moved outside of traditional Um, chiropractic to start their own chiropractic care, facility or, company. And he does not take insurance because going through insurance, he's like, it's gonna cost you as a patient so much more to come see me, even if your insurance is involved. And for him too, he gets paid less from the insurance companies. And so it, it almost feels like nobody's winning and you're like, what is going on? So whenever I find providers who just do not work with insurance in general, I love them. Like that's where we send Malakai for appointments. We do direct primary care, which is a whole nother world, we just pay for a monthly subscription with them and go as often as we want., And it's so much better because there's no middleman telling us what we can and can't do. And, it's just so crazy.

Chrissy:

And that's another thing is that the middleman, the health insurance companies are the ones essentially deciding whether or not a procedure or a treatment is necessary

Katie:

That is so insane to me

Chrissy:

Which it's crazy because these are a bunch of people who are not doctors who do not work in healthcare, making the ultimate decision on whether or not a treatment is going to be covered or paid for for this patient. And so we could be talking about life saving treatments. That insurance companies merely just like will not pay for, and it's very unfortunate. In addition, like we have a bunch of patients who need to go to acute rehab or a skilled nursing facility after leaving the hospital because they're medically cleared. But yet they had a broken hip, and so they're unsafe to mobilize at home by themselves. And so they need to go to some sort of inpatient rehab until they're able to mobilize safely, you know? And ultimately it is the insurance company's decision on whether or not they're able to go to a good quality rehab facility or a low quality rehab facility. And I just look at it, I'm like, this is so incredibly unfair that if you have crappy insurance, that you can't go to a facility. Now I do wonder, I have had patients who are self-pay, they are sometimes completely unable to go to nursing facilities or acute rehab. So Katie, I don't know if you have any, experience with that. Do you know if these health share companies cover nursing facilities or, acute rehab, like inpatient rehab, sort of things.

Katie:

My initial reaction is probably not, for some of these situations. I don't believe Christian Healthcare Ministries does. I'm not sure about something like Medi-Share, Medi-Share might, don't take me at my word for that. So people have to go do their own research on that, but so, we're actually considering switching from Christian Healthcare Ministries for a few different reasons. And one of the places that we are looking at switching, I know that for them specifically, they actually only allow people up to the age of 65, and then once you're over 65, you have to go find something else like maybe Christian Healthcare Ministries or Medi-Share. And so they probably wouldn't have something like that

Chrissy:

So that sounds like another strategy that they use to keep those health sharing costs low. For the vast majority of the population that is below the age of 65, who doesn't have the chronic, continuous, health needs. So like a, a normal middle-aged, healthy person, the vast majority of their healthcare needs are probably emergency based, situations or trauma based situations rather than chronic illnesses. And I think that's kind of the focus of a lot of these health share things is they focus a lot more on providing for those traumatic situations and the emergency situations. But for chronic illnesses and chronic conditions, they really do encourage you to get ahead of your chronic illnesses to prevent them from happening because they don't cover them as well.

Katie:

I mean, it does bring us back to the point of like if we start shifting our mindset to health insurance or a health insurance type thing, being more of a provider in these catastrophic situations, like in, in an emergent situation. That's really what it's intended for. We really need to start getting away from the idea of like health insurance covering all of our little preventative things because that should be more of an investment into our health. Like those kinds of things, like going to your doctor on a regular basis and going and taking care of some small things like that should be more preventative and more of an investment in yourself, in your long-term future. Whereas like I think health insurance is better used for emergencies and that's what we have really done. Or like maybe not even emergencies. Let me clarify that: larger incidents or larger medical events like, so pregnancy is another one that can cost, you know, out of pocket for us. Well, I will do a little like disclaimer. Ours was a little bit, different. For a normal pregnancy if everything had gone totally normal for us, it would've been less than$15,000 for the whole, pregnancy and birth and everything. And then we would've only paid around like 2 to$3,000 out of pocket.'Cause the personal responsibility is slightly higher for a maternity event with Christian Healthcare Ministries. And so it was slightly different and we can get into that another day. But it would've like if we start thinking of health insurance just for the emergent situations, and then put our finances and actually invest in our health, like take whatever we were gonna be paying for those premiums and high deductibles and invest in our health. That's what we've been really doing ourselves, like Wes and I with our family is, okay, we have this for the catastrophic events and any pregnancies and things like that, but day-to-day, yeah, we are going to the acupuncturist. Yeah, we are going to the chiropractor. Yeah. I do go to my annual physicals and get my labs done and things like that. And that's all out of pocket for us. And that is just an investment and it's something I put on my budget for every year and we have an amount saved for that. And so it's just a different way of thinking and we need to start getting to that versus asking our health insurance what we can and can't do. It's just, it's so silly.

Chrissy:

I, I think in addition to that, you know, Max and I, I mentioned earlier we were talking about transitioning from traditional healthcare to non-traditional healthcare. And we're in that same position that you guys were in at the beginning of your marriage of we are both pretty healthy and so we don't really use the extent of our health insurance. We pay nearly$350 a month. We go to primary care and maybe one or two urgent care visits a year for like the flu. You know, it, it's not a huge cost that we are incurring of healthcare at this point in our lives because we are generally healthy, and so we have strategized of like, okay, we're already spending$350 a month on. Health insurance, even though we don't use it nearly at all because we are healthy people. And so we've strategized that if we decide to switch to a non-traditional health insurance or a non-traditional healthcare company, then we can still save that$350 a month and use it for those preventative things like acupuncture, chiropractic, annual physicals, things like that, direct primary care. And even then with all of those things added up. We would still be able to pay for those out of pocket and save for the catastrophic events that will inevitably happen because we're human and we live on planet Earth. And that's what happens to humans on planet Earth is things go wrong. And so, yeah, just like the$350 a month can more than pay for the expenses that we actually incur throughout the year, and so would give us the opportunity to save for those catastrophic events and be able to cover ourselves by ourselves more effectively than a health insurance company can because at this point, paying$350 a month towards the health insurance company. Limits us from being able to save for catastrophic health events where we might get a bill in the mail that is equal to our annual deductible of$10,000 Where we'd say, well, we have an emergency fund, but we don't have a medical fund. You know? And so, and at what point do you say, well, I lost my job because of this medical expense? Well, there, boom, emergency fund, gone in two seconds, you know?

Katie:

I've been hearing lot more also, again, like these are on my podcast and YouTube videos and stuff, that there have been a lot of instances where health insurance companies will like hit you with these surprise bills and they'll decline your claims and things like that. And for things like, one of the examples that I heard, and I may have shared it on here before, but it was the guy who brought his daughter in to, get her ears checked. She was having chronic ear infections and couldn't sleep, and it was like really impacting her quality of life and just her ability to stay healthy in general. And the doctor had recommended putting tubes in her ears and she got the surgery done. And the hospital said, yeah, we work with your insurance in general. That was kind of the phrase like, we work with your insurance. And so they, here as the customer, were thinking, okay, great. You're gonna work with the insurance. The insurance is gonna pay for this. But after the surgery was done, their kiddo was doing really well. Sleeping was, becoming more healthy, not having all these chronic ear infections. And then a few months later they get a bill in the mail for thousands of dollars, like I would think it was like$30,000 for this surgery. And it was like, sorry, this claim was declined. And so they battled with their insurance month over month for so long for this insurance claim, saying no, the doctor said it was medically necessary, but they, the insurance company was like, Nope, this is, this was just something that you were choosing to get done. It was elective and the insurance company kept declining it and they fought for so long and they finally were like, this is pointless. Like, we, we are not gonna win. We can't, and then they were finding out that so many other people were dealing with these same things. And this is like a big well-known company. I won't plaster it out there, but it's like this health insurance company is doing this on several occasions and I'm like, oh my gosh. That is really scary and rather unfortunate that you think that your insurance company's gonna help pay for you. And then unfortunately, it's driving patients to like bankruptcy because they're like, I thought I would be able to do this with my insurance and now I can't and I can't pay for this. So yeah it's, I've, I actually, I think I have the quote, one out of five claims submitted to health insurance plans are denied every year. So that's 20% of health claims right now, like this is a current stat that I have and so you just don't know and that's the scary thing. It's like you, your provider itself, your doctor is saying these are medically necessary, but then your insurance company's like, nah.

Chrissy:

I do wonder, are there, do you know of any situation in which it would be beneficial for somebody to stick with a traditional health insurance company rather than switching to a non-traditional health insurance company?

Katie:

Ugh. Yeah. Well, what's interesting too, again, with the cost sharing programs, a lot of them support people who are healthier. That being said, Christian Healthcare Ministries does not decline anybody based on their health. And so you could be anybody, but I mean, one thing to consider is that CHM does not pay for ongoing prescriptions. So if you have any kind of medical prescription for a chronic illness that you have, CHM will not pay for that out of pocket. Now, I know that for some people that actually could be an astronomical expense depending on the medication that you're taking, and so sticking with traditional health insurance might potentially be beneficial in that situation. But what I would even encourage for that person is if that's you, then work to potentially reverse whatever it is that you have, if it's possible. Like find a naturopath doctor who can help you actually get out of that. Autoimmune disease or something, so that way you don't have to continue with that medication long term. And then consider switching. The other program that we're considering looking into and switching to they don't take people who are obese. And so if you weigh over a certain amount, and it's different for both male and female, they won't allow you into the program. And because you know, there's a lot more health costs, that are typically incurred from people who are obese. And so

Chrissy:

Katie, what's the name of that one?

Katie:

The program itself is called, Crowd Health. So it's similar to like crowdsourcing, right? So crowdsourcing for your health and. Yeah, we're considering it. Christian Healthcare Ministries, their cost has been increasing over the last few years, pretty consistently. They've also had more restrictions, like CHM has added some more restrictions as far as what you can and can't share. And there's just been a lot more fine print that it's like, okay, working around a lot of these things. I also really like So, Crowd health does not have a cap for the expenses that you can share. So you were mentioning that with the deductibles and stuff, with a traditional health insurance, you have a deductible that you pay, but then after you pay the deductible, the health insurance will pay a certain percentage of those expenses after your deductible, but only up into a certain amount. And then after that, you're responsible for it. CHM has something similar, unless you're on their CHM plus Program, where if you add the CHM Plus program, it makes the sharing unlimited. But crowd health, there is no cap. There's no maximum to how much you can share within reason. I mean, obviously if there's something catastrophic that's happening and you have millions of dollars worth of medical bills, which is a, a very real possibility because we have experienced that ourselves, like millions of dollars. They would fund that and work with the whole Crowd Health community to fund that. But they also want, they have a lot of like interesting scoring and stuff, but we can get into that a little bit more later

Chrissy:

So I really wanna dive into a little bit more on like the specifics of the differences between Christian Healthcare Ministries, Medi-share, and this new Crowd Health that you're mentioning, Katie. But unfortunately we are running out of time and so we can get into all three of those specifics during this episode, but. Stay Tuned. Next Friday we're gonna be talking about all three of those and the specifics of them, the comparison pros, cons, compare and contrast with all three of these different health sharing companies that are out there and potentially more if we hear about more. If there are other companies that you wanna hear about, let us know, and we might be able to create another podcast in the future about other healthcare companies that are available to the public. So, yeah, come back next Friday. These episodes are posted every Friday, wherever you listen to your podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. And make sure if you are loving our podcast, you leave a five star review so other people can hear about it more easily and learn more just as you are learning. And we are learning altogether. So. Thanks for tuning into our conversation today. Be sure to subscribe and also join us over on Facebook. On our Facebook group, Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget where we share tips and tricks on everything health, from food to cleaning supplies, to healthcare to chickens. Love the chickens. We also have created an Instagram page. It's called Crunchy Stewardship. Easy to find. We are public, so go ahead and follow us over there and, we can continue these conversations and get involved in our community. Until Next time, this is Chrissy

Katie:

and this is Katie.

Chrissy:

and thanks for listening to Crunchy Stewardship.