Back at the end of 2013, on the eve of Obamacare coming into effect for most Americans, we wrote some posts about Samaritan Ministries and other Christian health care cost sharing programs. (Here are the links to the series: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven.) Some of us who joined now have more in-depth experience with Samaritan Ministries, and we thought it was time to give an update.
Three different families and their experiences inform this update. My wife had a hospital delivery that ended with a C-section. The sticker price was around $30,000, but the total actually paid after negotiations was closer to $10,000. All of it was covered by other Samaritan members. The Weeks family had a normal hospital delivery whose costs, at around $17,000, were all shared through Samaritan. Their daughter, Mary, has had many medical complications since her birth, and those costs have been covered by the state of Indiana's medicaid program. In the Ummel family, Jonathan had a medical emergency that almost took his life. After a life flight from Bloomington Hospital to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis, he eventually stabilized by God's grace. Shortly thereafter he had major surgery in Chicago to correct the underlying problem. The financial burden shared by the Samaritan members totaled over six figures.
As you can see, Samaritan Ministries has played a major role in our extended family over the course of the last year. Each of us is very thankful to Samaritan and the many members who have helped bear our financial burdens. So given our experience, do we recommend Samaritan Ministries? Absolutely, but we must do so with some warnings. As you will see, there is a real non-monetary cost to joining Samaritan, but there are also some compelling reasons to do so...
