Content area
Full Text
I. Introduction to Health Care Sharing Ministries
Individuals and families face difficult choices about health care as the costs of medical care and health insurance continues to rise, and as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ActB [Individual MandateD approaches. Well over 160,000 Americans have found a solution for the high costs of medical care and health insurance through the services of Health Care Sharing Ministries (HCSMs).1 Members of HCSMs also have the benefit of a religious exemption from the [Individual Mandate Din the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).2 In brief, these ministries provide Q health care cost sharing arrangement among persons of similar and sincerely held beliefs, HCSMs are not-for-profit religious organizations that act as clearinghouses for Cthose who have medical expenses and those who desire to share the burden of those medical expenses. Ú The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, which represents two of the three major HCSMs, provides this further information:5
* HCSMs receive no funding or grants from government sources.
* HCSMs are not insurance companies. HCSMs do not assume any risk or guarantee the payment of any medical bill. Twenty- one states as of August 2012 have explicitly recognized this and specifically shelter HCSMs from their insurance codes.6
* HCSMs serve more than 160,000 people, with participating households in all fifty states.7
* HCSMsDparticipants share more than $120 million per year for one another S health care costs.
* HCSMs strive to be accessible to participants regardless of their income.
* Traditionally, HCSM costs are a fraction of the cost of insurance rates.8
Health Care Sharing Ministries have operated in the United States for about thirty years.9 HCSMs are Cfounded on the biblical mandate of believers to share each otherB needs, d" HCSM members Qeek to apply Galatians 6:2, [Bear one anotherB burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ Dto . . . ever-rising medical costs which can be quite burdensome for anyone . . . "1 HCSMs enshrine Q principle that has been around since the birth and growth of the early Church. The Book of Acts reports, [All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. OEl2 Christian members...