By Katy Talento, The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, for TOWNHALL
Anyone familiar with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) shouldn’t be surprised at their recent segment attacking Health Care Sharing Ministries (HCSMs). The taxpayer-supported PBS network pushes leftwing themes relentlessly.
In this case, they manipulated data and facts to paint a false picture of Health Care Sharing Ministries that fits their ideology.
Let’s set the record straight:
PBS’s segment asserts that Health Care Sharing Ministries don’t share in the full amount of a patient’s medical bill, neglecting to mention that this is also a standard practice with health insurance. Nobody — not insurers, not members of health care sharing ministries, and not self-pay patients — should pay list prices because they are almost always grossly inflated.
One of the best features of HCSMs is that they assist members in negotiating prices. Indeed, the bigger the “discount” from the original charge, the better. HCSMs would be irresponsible if they simply wrote price-gouging, price-hiding hospitals a blank check.
HCSMs negotiate hard on behalf of their members to get bills reduced, and some of them even negotiate contracts with hospitals or purchase access to networks of negotiated contracts to get bigger discounts for their members. The metric of a successful and responsible ministry in this regard would be a bigger not a smaller gap between billed charges and amounts shared after successful negotiations or discounts.
