Lawmakers Should Ensure Tax Parity for Health Sharing Ministries

As conversations about the rising cost of healthcare ramp up, there is increasing demand for more cost-effective options, freedom of choice in care, and cost transparency. As families make these deeply personal choices for themselves, lawmakers should ensure access to all options, including access to health sharing ministries.

Health sharing ministries are faith-based non-profit organizations that allow members to opt out of traditional insurance and, instead, pool their resources with like-minded individuals to cover health expenses. Roughly 1.7 million Americans are now involved in health-sharing arrangements.

Health sharing brings transparency and market pressure to the healthcare market. Health share ministries negotiate medical bills directly and encourages their members to do so as well. Today, medical billing is completely opaque and involves a labyrinth of intermediaries. Under the health sharing model, members can see exactly what they’re paying for and how much of their contribution goes towards actual medical needs (as opposed to massive administrative costs). Health share ministries, like Solidarity HealthShare and Christian Healthcare Ministries, note that their methods consistently deliver 60% to 70% in savings. Notably, the only way to effectively force medical costs down is to introduce free market pressures.

Health sharing ministries bring much-needed freedom of choice to the healthcare market. After the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed, tens of millions of Americans were ripped from both insurance plans they liked and from doctors they trusted. For those consumers who feel constrained by the extensive mandates and bureaucracy now enshrined in the healthcare system, health sharing restores autonomy.

Memberships are significantly less expensive than most insurance options. Monthly rates for a single person, for example, can be as low as $80 and average around $150 – for families, membership can average around $500 a month.

Health sharing aligns healthcare spending with moral convictions. The current insurance system forces people to indirectly fund abortions and gender reassignment surgeries, violating the conscience of millions of Americans.

Unfortunately, lawmakers and bureaucrats attempting to maintain the status quo of one-size-fits-all insurance systems have continuously waged attacks on these religious organizations. To protect this option for Americans, lawmakers should ensure their viability through tax parity with traditional insurance and their own health-sharing-specific non-profit status.

These reforms can and should include 1) allowing families to deduct the cost of membership from their annual tax bill, as Sen. Ted Budd’s (R-N.C.) Health Care Sharing Ministry Tax Parity Act would do; 2) allowing employers to deduct the cost of covering their employees under said membership; 3) enabling consumers to use health savings accounts (HSAs) in conjunction with their health sharing plan; and 4) creating a new subsection of the Internal Revenue Code, an amendment to § 501, designating health sharing ministries as a distinct category of tax-exempt organization.

These reforms would ensure that health share ministries remain a viable choice for those looking to escape the current insurance paradigm, lower their costs, have autonomy over their care, and align their spending with their moral convictions.