Medical Cost Sharing?

[Dinkshooter]

Anyone out there currently enrolled in a plan like this?

Looks to be about 1/2 the cost for my current situation vs straight health insurance. Looking at Sedera Health for price comparisons.

 

[406LIFE]

I use the superb VA health system, so I've notnused it myself. I do have good friends that use one and have had no issues using it. Idk the company.

 

[ShootsManyBullets]

Yeah - it's ok once you figure out how to submit your bills properly. You'll get a cash discount on almost everything that you do since they won't have to deal with insurance.

 

[npaden]

I switched to MediShare last year. It was way less than half the price of comparable ObamaCare Insurance. I have submitted a whopping 1 bill and it was approved and went toward my $10,000 deductible. I was hoping that they would negotiate the price down for me but they didn't get it down even a penny. In the future I think I will just negotiate the price down and pay with cash upfront and then submit it to them after it has already been paid.

I pay $368/month for me, my wife and my 12 year old son with a $10,000 per person deductible.

My last insurance was an HSA with a $7,500 deductible and it was $978 per month but it was going up to $1,225 per month so I quit it and switched to the sharing thing. If any of us actually hit our $10,000 deductible the price difference would almost pay for the deductible.

 

[Pagosa]

I'm with Medi-Share, and Thank God no major injuries/sickness yet. It cost our family of four $550 per month and $5000 yearly deductible. Way better than $1200 per months and $11,500 year deductible with Blue Cross.

 

[ShootsManyBullets]

Nearly $2k per month to insure the family was ridiculous so we switched a few years ago.

Negotiate everything upfront and renegotiate once you get the bills if you need to. Usually you can get junk fees dropped and 20-30% off the normal bill, sometimes more. Doctors charge up the arse for the pleasure of dealing with the insurance companies and their billing departments so you're doing them a favor by being a cash patient.

 

[npaden]

Thought I would update this post. This ended up being a foreboding thread for me. Just 4 days after my post above, my wife blew out her knee skiing. Tore her ACL and required surgery.

For the most part everything except the surgeon's fee is settled and so far we've paid $7,322.27. The total amount of bills submitted to Medishare so far has been just over $30,000 and they have applied over $17,000 of discounts on those bills based on their PPO agreements. The Surgeon bill was $6,000 and required a prepayment of $2,400 (already included in the $7,300 noted above) but for some reason Medishare hasn't settled that bill yet so not sure what the final tally will be but it looks like we will slip in under the deductible amount.

Having the PPO discount really made a HUGE difference on the bigger bills, the hospital bill for the surgery was $11,998 by itself but they negotiated it down to $2,300. I wouldn't have thought the hospital would have accepted that big of a haircut, but we had actually prepaid them $6,100 and they sent us a refund check for the difference.

So overall it seems the Medishare worked pretty well for us.

The good news is that the surgery went really well and my wife is pretty much back to walking 100% normally again. She is a runner and is chomping at the bit ready to start running again but they are telling her that she still needs to wait a bit more before she can start running again and they don't want her on skis again for at least a year. Looks like our annual Christmas ski vacation may need to be at the beach or something like that this year.

 

[noharleyyet]

Useful share npaden...I need to research.

 

[stillkickin]

I need to do more digging also!

Thanks for the heads up

 

[Pucky Freak]

Thanks for the update about your experience with this. I get insurance through state employment, but have a friend who used a similar program and turned out to fill a great need for her and her family.