Medishare Christian Group Health Care promises a lower cost alternative to traditional health insurance. Here’s my experience with Medishare after two months using the service.
A few months ago, I wrote an intro review of Medishare, discussing my problems with acquiring affordable health insurance. After careful consideration of what Medishare has to offer, I decided to sign my family up for their Christian group health carer. Now, after being a member for almost two months, I thought I would provide an update on what I like and don’t like being a Medishare member.
Medishare Cost is As Advertised
Initially when writing my review, Medishare provided me a table that showed what my monthly share cost would be for a family of four in my age bracket. Having selected the $7,500 annual household portion (the amount I need to pay out of pocket before I’m able to have other members start paying my bills), my monthly cost was shown to be $313. They gave me this number before I entered any personal information about myself or my family, other than our ages.
After signing up, and paying the first few share notices (without the initial administrative fees, which they clearly list for new members), the cost of my monthly share is $316. The $313 was the advertised cost along with a $3 sharing account fee. Here’s a copy of the monthly share statement I receive, showing the breakdown of costs:
Prescriptions are EXPENSIVE
As luck would have it, my family got hit with the flu bug in late February. My wife was hardest hit, followed by my one-year-old son, then four-year-old daughter. I survived it all. But each of them had to go to their doctor for a visit, and each were prescribed different medications for different ailments. My daughter also had an ear infection. So this is what the doctors prescribed:
- Tamiflu
- Albuterol inhalers x2 (one for my wife, one for my son)
- Amoxicillin
In addition to the above prescriptions, I picked up a handful of over the counter medications to help with coughs, runny noses, sore throats and mild fevers. My trip to the pharmacy for these four prescriptions and $25 of over-the-counter medicine ran me just over $550. The Tamiflu was most expensive at $170 (for 12 small capsules) followed by the Amoxicillin, then the inhalers.
Thankfully, after about 10 days of sickness, no one needed refills or follow-up visits. Including the $90 for the three visits (I have a $30 co-pay for physician visits with Medishare), this round cost me about $640 out of pocket. As prescriptions don’t count toward my out-of-pocket expense figure, it’s truly out of pocket.
Shots are EXPENSIVE
In addition to the house getting hit with the flu, we also had my son’s routine 15-month check-up with his pediatrician. This particular visit included three shots, the same ones my daughter received from the same pediatrician at the same appointment years ago. After Medishare applied a small discount to the bill, I received a statement in the mail (as well as a statement online in my Medishare account). The cost for the visit would be just over $400. Previously, when I was paying for my bronze Obamacare health insurance, visits like this were completely covered. However now, I pay out of pocket for anything outside the standard $30 co-pay.
The good news about that cost is that up until a child turns six, visits like this count toward the annual share portion of my plan. When the doctor’s office sends a bill to Medishare, it posts in my account and shows two things:
- How much Medishare paid (so far, that’s nothing).
- How much the bill was (and then in the detail, how much I had to pay after discounts, and how much is put toward my annual household portion amount)
You’ll notice the total charge amounts are a little bit higher than the amounts I’m quoting in this article. That’s because we do receive slight discounts when visiting physicians. For example, the bill for my son and his shots was $501, but we ended up paying $440. It’s not a big savings, but it’s a savings.
Documents and Paperwork are Well Tracked
While it’s not ideal to have to pay out of pocket for most everything, I can say the difference between our Medishare account and our former AccessHealthCT (insurance exchange site for Connecticut) is striking. Bills are uploaded in our Medishare interface promptly; both times I’ve called into customer service, my calls were picked up immediately. And statements/payments are applied promptly. My previous Bronze plan had all kinds of problems with documents and customer service. I can remember having to send in a birth certificate FOUR times before they confirmed receipt. Tried email twice, fax once, and mail once. Such a pain.
In addition to having all documents shown promptly (so far), I also can see all of the bills other people have shared and that Medishare paid online. I wasn’t quite sure of just how large this health care plan organization was until I went through the daily bills the plan pays. You’ll see from the screenshot above the first 10 bills that show up as paid today. I went through 25 pages before I got the point. A lot of people utilize this service on a daily basis.
The amounts you see above are paid directly using my monthly share portion of $313.00. When a bill is paid using my money, I receive a note letting me know it’s been used, along with the name of the person it’s being used for and a chance to write a note wishing them well. I haven’t utilized this part of the Medishare program yet. And while I hope never to have to actually have them cover my bills, my thought is it will be different to actually see someone else paying my bill rather than a large insurance company. We’ll see when that day comes.
It’s Still a Great Value
February and March were rough months healthwise for the Prusers. Nothing terrible. Nothing drastic. But outside of our routine annual check-ups and quarterly check-ups for our son, it’s rare we visit a doctor. My family is healthy with no pre-existing conditions, so we don’t expect to pay much out-of-pocket for healthcare. This reason alone is why we shed the $1,100+/month weight that our previous health insurance was going to cost, instead opting for Medishare.
With prescriptions, doctor visits for three, and our two monthly share portions, we spent just under $1,700 on health care with 10 days left to go in March. If we can avoid any additional doctor visits (everyone 100% healthy right now), we’ll still have saved over $500 from our bronze Obamacare package. Every month we can get through healthy will be another $600 – $800 savings as well. This is the money I can put into an HSA, or simply put into a high-yield savings account, and hold for a rainy day.
For now, even with having slight sticker shock at the pharmacy and at the check-out counter of our physicians office, I’m thrilled with what I see from Medishare. If and when I meet my $7,500 annual out of pocket expense and have to have Medishare begin covering my bills, I’ll certainly provide another update.
But so far, everything I wrote about in my initial review seems to have held true to start our relationship. Strong customer service, good platform, and low cost.
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