In My Opinion
By L.N.P.

Sharing The Burden

Before I moved to Texas I had health insurance coverage through Blue Cross. I was able to qualify as the administrator of a “group” (albeit a small one consisting of me, my son-in-law who works for us full-time, and my daughter, who was a part-time employee). Because of my membership in that group, I was never required to fill out scores of forms about my previous conditions, including every medication I take, every illness I’ve ever had, every doctor visit, every hospitalization etc. I consider myself extraordinarily blessed with good health and actually wouldn’t have had much to put on those forms but for a few chronic problems that most anyone who reaches my age is bound to have. My insurance premium was $450 a month ­— high, but worth it for the peace of mind and the low co-payments on my prescription drugs.

When we decided to move to Texas, the group was disbanded. My husband continued to be covered by his Veteran’s insurance, while I went back to being an independent contractor. I applied to the same company I’d had in California for individual insurance. After subjecting me to a two-hour phone interview and a 5-page exquisitely detailed questionnaire, they turned me down. The letter I received said they were sorry but they would have to decline my request for health insurance based on my history of tension headaches and high blood pressure. My only recourse was to go to my physician and request that he write something that might make them change their minds.

So, for $90 I sat down with my new doctor for ten minutes while we discussed the situation. My doctor thought that denying me health insurance was absurd, and wrote to them on my behalf saying that despite the fact that I've had tension headaches since I was 18, I somehow managed to be a high-functioning person, working a pressure-packed job under a tremendous amount of stress, and that my blood pressure was totally under control with medication. He wrote that for a woman my age I was actually in exceptionally good health. They turned me down again. That policy would have been $367 a month, after a $1,500 deductible. But, Blue Cross reassured me; if I still wanted insurance, I could enter the Texas Risk Pool. I investigated and learned that Texas Risk Pool insurance would cost me $900 a month for the very same coverage. Now, assuming I could afford this, which I really cannot, on principle alone I choose not to pay $10,000 a year for the insurance because it is grossly unfair.

I related this tale to a politically conservative friend of mine and he answered by saying that although he sympathized, I really didn’t have a “natural right” to health insurance, just as he didn’t have a natural right to the car he drives or the roof over his head. All I had was the right to life, liberty, and private property. (I thought it was the pursuit of happiness, but I wasn’t about to quibble.) Instead, I responded that I didn’t think the comparison with his choice of car and expensive home was apt, and that education might be a more fitting one. What if everyone had to apply for public education, and he were told that for some arbitrary reason, he had to pay three times the amount that his neighbor paid to send his children to school. Not because he chose to send them to some posh private school, but for the exact same public education his neighbor’s children were receiving? Wouldn’t he, for even a moment, scream unfair? He hasn’t yet answered my question.

Interestingly, however, what my friend, whose name is Joseph Phillips by the way, DID do is write a column on public education appearing on this very website (click here to read it). In it, he argues for public education, but against government’s role in it. To quote him directly, he writes, “The difference in how we answer the education question is the difference between public dollars made available to parents for the purposes of educating their children and government schools, manned with government employees, filled with government curriculum, at the mercy of government bureaucracy.”

I’m not quite sure what he means. Where do those “public dollars being made available to parents” come from? As far as I could tell back when I was living in California, it came from my tax dollars, a fraction of which was earmarked for educating his and his neighbor’s children, despite the fact that my children have been out of public school for twenty years. And although I agree with him that money made available to educate your child in the school of your choice (which I think they call school vouchers) would be a better answer than reliance on government-controlled schools, I still wonder who’s providing that money. And more to the point, how does education qualify, any more than health care does, as a natural right?

Contrary to what Mr. Phillips assumed, I am NOT favoring universal health care. What I AM favoring is some way to make the system fair. And I’m not looking to the government to step in and solve this problem any time soon. Clearly, they’ve made a big enough mess out of Medicare, a government-controlled health insurance program with which I’m sure I’ll find myself wrestling soon enough.

So I decided to put my health in God’s hands. Now, that doesn’t mean I planned to sit back and rely upon God to keep me so healthy that I’d never need health insurance. Nor does it mean that I believed I’d be miraculously cured of the health issues I do have and wouldn’t have to purchase the prescription drugs I take every month. It just means that when I come up against a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, I use the gifts God gave me, get out there and do my part. And then I put my trust in Him to do the rest. This problem merely called for some research.

The first thing I did was to buy an incredibly informative little book called “Prescription Drugs for Half Price or Less” by Stephen S.S. Hyde. (actually, the FIRST thing I did was search online, but for once I couldn’t find any good answers there, just a bunch of insurance company scams).  At any rate, this book really delivered, providing me with some unbelievably useful information on how to radically cut the costs of my monthly prescriptions, some of which I’ve already put into practice. It also made me detest insurance companies, HMOs, and greedy pharmaceutical companies—even more than I had previously —by exposing some of their most egregious money-grubbing, price-gauging practices.

Then I just started talking about my situation whenever possible, trusting that someone would have a solution. I didn’t know how this would happen; I just believed that it would. And it didn’t take long. On Thanksgiving Day, after enjoying a delicious dinner at a friend’s home, we got into a conversation when the subject just naturally came up. I mentioned that I didn’t have any health insurance, and our host asked if we’d ever heard of Christian Care Medi-Share. I hadn’t, so he got out the brochures. When I got home I started reading.

That’s when I discovered that there IS a better way. It’s better because it has absolutely nothing to do with the government or insurance companies. It has to do with the biblical principle of caring for and sharing in the burdens of our brothers and sisters in need. It has to do with compassion, based on the cold hard fact that more than 45 million Americans are without health insurance. A Christian group apparently decided that this was unacceptable and unbiblical; after all, we are SUPPOSED to take care of each other. So they formed Medi-Share, based on the concept that members take care of other members, protecting them against the potentially devastating cost of illness, disease, surgery, injury — things that happen to people. Each member agrees to faithfully send in a certain amount every month to take care of their share of the medical expenses of other members. The dollar amount for everyone over 40 is $236. No one is higher risk than anyone else. But there’s a catch. You have to live a “Christian” lifestyle: no smoking, no drug abuse, including alcohol, no sex outside of marriage. From an actuarial point of view, they obviously reasoned that tobacco, immoderate drug and alcohol consumption, and indiscriminate sex tend to drive up the cost of health insurance for everyone.

Now some of you readers may think that THIS plan is the one that’s unfair, because in order to become a member you have to be a practicing Christian. In fact, you even need a letter from a minister of your church to confirm that you are a practicing Christian. That’s because a group of Christians, on their own initiative, decided to practice what they preach and use biblical principles to share in the burdens of their brothers and sisters.

Of course, the concept of caring for one another is not unique to Christianity, although it IS one of its most crucial tenets.  In theory, any group of people, even a secular group, could start the same type of share plan based on their own set of guidelines. If they can agree on them. Fortunately for Christians, the guidelines are crystal clear because they are laid out in the Bible: love your brother and sister as you love yourself. Treat others as you want to be treated. That’s the only way this not-for-profit health plan can work.

Send me your opinions at LParis@netlistings.com