Samaritan Ministries: Christians Helping Christians
Over the last few years our medical insurance premiums have increased so much that we were really struggling to pay them. My husband and three children were on a health plan through his work—at the cost of nearly $600 a month for just their coverage. Adding me on the plan would have cost another $300 a month, so I opted to get a private policy with a lower premium—but a much higher deductible (somewhere in the realm of $5,000!). And still my monthly premium was ridiculous.
But late last year my husband read this post on Shaun Groves’ blog, a post in a series about Shaun’s son’s battle with Kawasaki’s disease. Shaun revealed that although his family didn’t have insurance, they expected to have to pay next to nothing out of pocket for the medical bills they had incurred because they were members of Samaritan Ministries, a health care sharing ministry where Christians help other Christians with their medical bills. Of course this intrigued Jeff in light of the struggle we were having with our medical insurance costs.
So we looked into Samaritan to see if it would work for us. After some research into the ministry, and much prayer, we canceled most of our medical insurance (only Jeff retained his due to his numerous pre-existing conditions), and joined Samaritan in January of this year. Since joining Samaritan, our out-of-pocket health care costs (for both medical bills and premiums) have decreased dramatically.
A few months after we joined Samaritan, my mother also decided to cancel her overpriced medical insurance and join Samaritan. But only a few weeks after she joined, she had to undergo emergency heart bypass surgery and, without insurance, she incurred over $100,000 in medical bills. Thankfully Samaritan came through as promised, and all of my mother’s bills have been paid. Obviously, Samaritan has been a true blessing to our family.
Samaritan Ministries is a wonderful ministry, but it’s not for everyone. Yet for many Christians in today’s economy, it can be a real answer to prayer—as it was for us.
For more Frugal Friday tips, visit Crystal’s blog.
AUTHOR | Joy Miller
Joy, one of the original 3 Moms at Happy to be at Home, is the wife of a music minister and spends her days homeschooling her three children (ages 6, 9, and 11), teaching piano lessons from her home, and trying to improve her cooking skills. You can read more about Joy on her personal blog, Five J's.
Very interesting! We’ve been so fortunate to get good insurance for all 5 of us for under $500 per month, but… that still seems like a lot to me. I briefly looked into this before; I might have to do it again. Thanks for the info!
very neat!
its good when we can be more like the church in Acts and help one another out.
my work offers wonderful medical insurance for $40 a month - I’m looking forward to adding Mr. Right onto my insurance for an addional $40 and him dropping his $5K deductible coverage!
I hadn’t even heard of that. Thanks for sharing!
I know a few people who might benefit from this.
I’ve never heard of this before. Right now our insurance is affordable, but there has been talk that they want to increase it quite a bit. I’ll have to look into this. Thanks for posting!
I’d never heard of this before now, praise God for meeting your mother’s needs! This is really great and I’m so glad it’s working for you!
Awesome!
My son’s bills wound up being 36K and Samaritan came through for us. Before Samaritan I was paying over $600/month as a sole proprietor with a wife and three kids. Ouch.
Glad I discovered your blog, btw. I’ll be back every Friday for sure.
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