Medical Bills of Insured Patients - the Largest Cause of Bankruptcy. Switch to Medical Cost Sharing?

(In fact, millions have already done so)Show more

Melinda Goodwin, Zion HealthShare
your-mp.com/founder-s-marketplace

Millions of families “bank” not at banks, but rather at credit unions. Several million now get their health “insurance” not with insurance companies, but rather through Medical Cost Sharing Communities. ObamaCare was terrible for insurance but was needed to unleash what is really a rebirth of the centuries-old “mutual aid” model of paying bills.

A hundred years ago, most workers belonged to associations that sometimes collected fees to pay for a “lodge doctor,” or bills for pensions or medical care. And while ObamaCare threatened those not covered by insurance with fines, one group was exempted: the “Religious Sharing Ministries.” With the Affordable Care Act pricing insurance out of reach of everyone but the working poor, a million (mostly small) entrepreneurs, like your local Realtor agents, fled insurance for these religious “mutual aid” plans. Entrepreneurs, seeing the growing demand, produced new sharing companies for the secular and small business markets.

These new Sharing companies are becoming popular with the best sales agents, who are now offering them instead of traditional insurance. Many are also helping patients shop on price and quality, thus aiding the long-term goal of price-sensitive competition, so needed in a market with such distorted and hidden pricing. Forbes featured one brokerage’s combination of Sharing with the popular Health Savings Account. Others like how they complement Direct Primary Care.

Some of these communities are better at Sharing more natural health approaches - increasingly popular with patients disillusioned with the expense and side effects of mainstream care. And many just want to see a more competitive health market and help avoid further governmental takeover – which is where we are headed if we fail to use market forces to open up what most agree is a dysfunctional cartel.

Zion HealthShare is one of the fastest-growing Sharing Communities, and Melinda Goodwin explains why.