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Medishare VS Blue Shield
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Medishare VS Blue Shield
As many of us shift to concierge medical providers, the need for costly medical coverage comes into question. Our family is considering the Christian Sharing program Medishare in place of Blue Shield PPO. We’re looking for advice on this switch, please.
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20 Replies
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Following
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This review is worthwhile.
https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/medishare-reviews/
thepennyhoarder.com
Christian Health Coverage May Be For You if You are OK With the Restrictions
Have you considered using a health-care sharing ministry to save money on health insurance? Here’s our Medi-Share review for 2019.
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I was seriously thinking about doing this several years ago but didn’t. The reason I was thinking about it was because I normally go to naturopathic/functional minded doctors who don’t take insurance, plus I pay for a Direct Primary Care MD. Then after the Covid vax I got cancer. Insurance paid for some stuff, I paid about $200k for things they didn’t cover. Would those costs all have been covered by sharing? It’s hard to imagine with how many people are sick these days. Then I learned that I had an immune deficiency and am taking immunoglobulin infusions weekly. It is very expensive and although I’m hoping I won’t have to, most people once diagnosed take it for life. Would sharing have paid for that? Even if they did, I probably couldn’t live with the guilt of raising everyone’s premiums just to cover this for me. Something to think about. Insurance companies have millions of customers to spread costs out.
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Have you contacted Dr. William Makis in Alberta, Canada about your cancer and other issues? He’s amazing and doing a lot of research and data collecting as he helps people through the internet.
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Thank you. I do follow his work on cancer, and have been taking the repurposed drugs for a while I am cancer free almost 3 years now. I’m not sure if he’s treating primary immune deficiencies, but seems to be focused on cancer.
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You may want to consider high dose melatonin (HDM) with ascorbic acid (AA). Take a look at Doris Loh on Facebook (she also has a group: Doris Loh Talks AA & Mel – Ancient Molecules) where she shares educational information on what she calls “the dynamic duo”. Doris has written a number of peer reviewed papers on Melatonin, I will share them in a separate reply.
HDM is considered to be over 1,000mg/day and Doris’s minimum recommendation for healthy people is: from age 50, 180mg/day + 100mg/year thereafter. (Min 2,000mg/day if have cancer.)
Melatonin powder & AA can be obtained from purebulk.com together with small measuring spoons which is the easiest way to take Mel. The best way to take it is in small doses under the tongue.
Take a higher dose at bedtime than taking during the day. Ideal to take divided doses every two hours throughout the day (though it is a trial & error process. I can currently only take it in the morning without being sleepy during the day and being awake in the early hours of the morning.) Melatonin shouldn’t make you sleepy, if it does, you likely need to take a higher dose.
Doris says: Melatonin at any dose, would not make you sleepy, groggy, or tired, IF your mitochondria are functioning optimally. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1406779789714470/permalink/1968054523586991/
In comments: Doris: To Alex Wainstein: sleepiness reflects a specific ratio of ATP to ADP. When your mitochondria are optimal, during the daytime, under normal circumstances, you should not be sleepy. When would you be sleepy during the daytime? If you are sick, if you are deprived from sleep the night before, if you are exhausted from over-exertion. All these conditions reflect the state of your ATP:ADP ratio. Two different individuals with different states of mitochondrial health will respond differently to the same set of stimuli described above.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1406779789714470/permalink/1850960865296358/
Why do some people fare poorly on lower doses of melatonin? I gave the answer in an extensive peer-reviewed paper published in January 2022.
The point was well made and is now cited in a peer-reviewed publication on prions.
A team of scientists from South Korea made my day with their new peer-reviewed paper on prions when they cited my work “Melatonin: Regulation of Prion Protein Phase Separation in Cancer Multidrug Resistance” [1,2].
What did they find from my paper that was worth citing?
“…the study of administrating low and high doses of melatonin in animal studies presented the controversial results of stimulating or inhibiting prion activities [254].”
I want to say that this point was the main topic I wanted to drive home in the minds of everyone who read the paper, because it helps explain why some people fare so poorly on lower doses of melatonin. However, there is no indication that the importance of this unique feature of melatonin is fully-appreciated until this publication.
References:
[1] Shim, K. H.; Sharma, N.; An, S. S. A. Prion Therapeutics: Lessons from the Past. Prion 2022, 16 (1), 265–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/19336896.2022.2153551.
[2] Loh, D.; Reiter, R.J. Melatonin: Regulation of Prion Protein Phase Separation in Cancer Multidrug Resistance. Molecules 2022, 27, 705. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27030705
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Doris Loh’s peer reviewed papers written with Russel J Reiter who has spent his career studying Melatonin.
The potential of melatonin in the prevention and attenuation of oxidative hemolysis and myocardial injury from cd147 SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor binding.
https://www.melatonin-research.net/index.php/MR/article/view/86
Melatonin: Regulation of Prion Protein Phase Separation in Cancer Multidrug Resistance:
https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/3/705
Includes how melatonin works at low versus high doses in the human body.
Light, Water, and Melatonin: The Synergistic Regulation of Phase Separation in Dementia.
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/6/5835
Includes in Section 4, how to convert from mice doses to human doses.
Melatonin, ATP, and Cataracts: The Two Faces of Crystallin Phase Separation
https://www.qeios.com/read/D09YND
The Mitochondria Chronicles of Melatonin and ATP: Guardians of Phase Separation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590279224000075
Dysfunctional Mitochondria in Age-related Neurodegeneration: Utility of Melatonin as an Antioxidant Treatment
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163724002988?
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I’m sorry to hear about all of the medical issues that you are dealing with! I too, have looked into health sharing and really hoped it would take the place of the cheap catastrophic insurance that Obamacare essentially outlawed. But I, also, get cold feet after reading the health share booklets. It seems that many things are either not covered, or “could” be not covered, or else they will cover up to a certain amount only – they seem to have caps on what they will pay for something. Sounds like they are great with covering predictable things, like childbirth or a planned surgery — but, as thinking, cash-pay patients, we also could fairly easily cover those things, too! It’s the catastrophic that we need protection from — we need a “stop loss” program. Richer businesses can look into self insurance plans, where a stop loss from an insurance company prevents any catastrophic claim from taking out the business’s savings. However, as a very tiny company, we don’t have the funds for this. We really need the government to get out of the insurance business so that catastrophic plans can be had once more. *Caveat – I also know insurances are just as slippery and probably have tons of lawyer speak that also get them out of covering when you need them most.
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Would also review/consider HSA s and high deductible catastrophic insurance. Likelihood of needing goes down with good natural/functional medicine providers.
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Unfortunately catastrophic plans are not available to most people.
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A far better and possibly less expensive option, I believe, is ‘Direct Primary Care’, or (DPC) . While keeping your hospital catastrophic coverage (hope you never need it), you pay an ongoing monthly fee to a DPC clinic based on your age ( or family need) and you get a 1:1, unhurried, attentive, primary care office visit (or telehealth) whenever you need it.
I hope you have a DPC service in your community.
You may use Brave search engine ( NO Google or Wikipedia ) for comparison of Direct Primary Care vs Concièrge Medicine.
I noticed that you are using Gmail service, may I suggest a better alternative to enhance your online privacy? Please look into secure email service like Tuta or Protonmail; one is German the other is Swiss, both have a free subscription option.
Best
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We have been on CHM for years after our premiums went to 1200 a month with a 15k deductible as we are self employed. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
We first applied to medishare and I did not care for how they treated us in the application process, but that was many years ago
I was very hesitant to leave traditional insurance but CHM has paid every bill that is shareable. They answer the phone and you get to talk to a real person who cares about you and will pray for you and with you. It’s non profit and the people matter. We have saved thousands of dollars
Please lmk what questions you have. I am happy to have a conversation with you if that would help.
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I have Medi-Share and a catastrophic BCBS plan. I have post covid syndrome and cardiac nerve damage from covid so have needed multiple procedures. Having both plans has allowed me to see the providers of my choice (mostly) and has saved me thousands of dollars out of my pocket. My deductibles reset at different times of the year so that helps a lot.
I’ve had a good experience with Medi-Share in general. There are some providers that won’t take it or will only take it as a secondary “insurance”.
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My family have been Medishare members since Obamacare was created and we were forced to look for better ways to deal with health insurance. For the most part Medishare is a good option. We live in a rural area and very few providers are contracted with the Medishare network, which makes it difficult. We have the option to pay cash and submit it to Medishare for sharing but it adds to our time. I continue to consider other options because the sharing goes up every year. We pay $800 for family of four with a 5500 family deductible. I am glad to answer any questions you have.f
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Thank you for posting this question. I was just researching Medi-Share last week. It turns out there are several other similar programs for Christians interested in sharing medical costs, but only three main programs, with Medi-Share being the largest (from what I gathered). I called and talked to a couple of their customer service reps. They strongly emphasized that Medi-Share IS NOT insurance. I believe the other similar Christian share programs also say this.
I found it concerning that they are not regulated like typical insurance programs, so they do not guarantee payment. I went on the BBB website and read reviews and complaints, which was concerning. It seemed like one of the main complaints was Medi-Share not covering certain expenses because they deemed it to be related to something preexisting. I found the Medi-Share definition of preexisting to be quite broad. My friend was with Medi-Share for a number of years, but never put in a claim, so couldn’t speak to whether they were easy to work with on getting payment. You may be interested in reading these reviews-
medishare.com Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of medishare.com
If the link doesn’t work, you can go to trustpilot.com and search for medishare.com in the search bar.
It seems there is no way to verify the financial stability of the Medi-Share company, like there may be with larger companies that are regulated and provide financial information to investors. As a result of my research, I was not comfortable with the idea of joining Medi-Share.
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I looked at some more reviews of Medi-Share online and they were terrible, with many people who had paid into it claiming that it is a scam.
I do feel concerned about companies looking to take advantage of well-meaning people.
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I have not had a problem getting claims paid by Medi-Share when the provider or hospital submits it. It’s more complicated if you submit it yourself because it does not go through the electronic system and you have to provide all the right forms with coding, etc. I have found this to be true for my BCBS policy as well when I go out of network…
Medi-Share has been very pleasant to deal with in general. They’ve paid for all my surgeries that were not covered by my BCBS plan and when BCBS pd as primary, they pd what BCBS did not pay.
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You might like to consider Knew Health which is also a members sharing scheme started by James Maskell of The Functional Forum. It gets excellent reviews on Trustpilot.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/knewhealth.com
trustpilot.com
Knew Health is rated "Excellent" with 4.7 / 5 on Trustpilot
Do you agree with Knew Health's TrustScore? Voice your opinion today and hear what 130 customers have already said.
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I looked up KnewHealth, which is BBB accredited, but there were no reviews on the BBB. I thought that was odd.
On the TrustPilot website one of the reviews mentioned they had a $5,000.00 deductible. Some other five star reviews were by people who were new with KnewHealth and had not yet even filed a claim. It seems like a relatively new/young company.
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The KnewHealth disclaimer says, “membership in Knew Health should never be considered a substitute for a health
insurance policy” and “membership does not guarantee or promise that your eligible needs will be shared”.
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