Alternative Health Care Flourishes

Consumers seek solutions to either unmet needs or alternatives to a substandard product or service. A great example of this maxim is this: Participants in health care cost-sharing ministries have more than doubled in number since ObamaCare’s inception in March 2010.

Before ObamaCare, there were faith-based risk pools such as Samaritan Ministries International, Medi-Share and Christian Healthcare Ministries. A hundred years ago, such mutual-aid societies covered one-third of American men before the welfare state saw to its decline. But while ObamaCare outlaws any new such ventures, membership has exploded for the ones grandfathered in under the law. Samaritan alone grew 33% last year, and is more than double its size in 2013.

With membership in these nonprofit organizations now surpassing 500,000, all credit rests with the so-called “Affordable Care Act.” That monstrosity was passed without a single Republican vote and signed into law by Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 — six years ago this week. From their inception in the early nineties, these organizations were growing at a rate of no more than 10% annually, until the Left weaponized the IRS to mandate the purchase of a service (health insurance).

In other words, until Obama decided to play the good liberal Samaritan — helping the sick by forcing them to buy health insurance.

The health care cost-sharing agreements in these ministries work with a monthly premium, sometimes as low as $150 per month. Individuals and families are matched with others to create a risk pool of participants who contract to reimburse medical expenses from an approved list. The patient/consumer bears the financial responsibility to shop for the best pricing and to pay for services rendered. Imagine, market-driven health care that makes the patient the customer.

More