I haven’t seen a thread on these here but we’ve now had Liberty Health Share for two years and I’m impressed. We’ve had to float money for a bit on the birth of the second little one but they’ve paid everything reasonably timely even through a pregnancy.
The monthly fees are set to go up to $529 per month for a family plus a $2250 family deductible, but it’s way better than anything on the open market as long as you don’t have preexisting conditions.
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I considered it for a little while since my family plan with my employer was actually more expensive than ~$500/month. But in the end I went with my employer. If I were self employed, I would probably choose a heath share.
This is part of what I posted in the “Obamacare - practical discussion” forum:
"In NY, the only options in the individual and small group market are HMOs and EPOs with no out-of-network coverage. For most types of routine care, even the current narrow network options are fine. For more complicated injuries and illnesses, the difference in quality of care between the top tier, which is not covered by ACA plans in NY, and the mid and lower tier of care could be substantial. To be clear, I am talking about rare, but very expensive types of care, that most of us won’t need. Still, it made sense for me to consider where I would want to be treated if I had cancer or a serious injury and to try to obtain coverage for the possibility of needing it at a reasonable cost
In order to mitigate this risk I have coverage from Liberty HealthShare, which can be used as a supplement to a catastrophic or bronze plan. For a full year, this plan currently costs $3,713 for two people with a $1K deductible but will increase by $50 per month for a $1,750 deductible. If we had added this coverage for roughly $4K per year to our existing coverage, our deductible would have dropped from @ $15K per couple in-network and unlimited out-of-network to $1K.
Although they have reimbursed us for a very expensive specialist that doesn’t take any insurance in addition to other lower cost providers, I am not assuming that the full cost of every type of care will be covered. Still, some coverage for what care that would not have been covered at all is better than none."
I signed up for Liberty Health Share in January. I have not met the deductible yet so I don’t have any reimbursement experience. However, one side-benefit that I noticed is that Liberty actually negotiated an office visit charge I had earlier this year from about $190 to under $100. This was a nice side benefit that saved me $$$.
Bumping this to ask how you are liking this health share still.
Here was another experience from a BH thread on non-ACA options.
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=260445
Rising premiums, rising out-of-pocket maximums, and more restrictive networks are just painful. If you can get over the stigma, heathsharing programs can act as a “catastrophic insurance” plan. The biggest healthshares have coverage up to $1million, which is good enough for most families. Premiums (called sharing amounts) for a family of 4 are typically in the $400-$600/mo range. There is usually a deductible (called an unshared amount) with typical ranges from $1000-$5000. What sold me was the no-network-so-every-provider-is-in-network aspect. My most pleasant surprise was that all my bills, even for things that weren’t covered, were negotiated down to the levels that regional insurance companies usually covered.
If someone has chronic medical problems that consistently cost $25,000/year, then don’t even consider healthsharing–or any non-ACA plan for that matter. But, if the $10k-$15k that you save each year with a healthshare can cover your chronic medical conditions, then you will probably come out ahead. Also, many healthshares do cover preexisting conditions. However, the coverage usually phases in over 2-3 years.
Some of the quirks: they do not cover illness or injury that was caused by a vice such as drinkin’, philanderin’, rootin’ & tootin’. Well, maybe they’d cover tootin’. There is no government-mandated guarantee that they will follow their sharing guidelines, so there is a tiny bit of uncertainty about payment. They typically do not have large admin departments, so they don’t advertise much or lobby congress or create a lot of paperwork for providers/patients and they sometimes take a longer time to process claims. Some are even staffed by volunteers. My healthshare, Liberty, does not cover pregnancy–I covered my kid’s birth out of pocket with what I saved.
Remember that you can also cover some members on an ACA plan and the healthy members on a healthshare/short-term/medical tourism/cash. Good luck!
Liberty certainly covers pregnancy, as long as you aren’t already pregnant when signing up. We had a new 7 months ago and they took care of everything but the deductible.
Solid Place to get coverage.