Given the skyrocketing costs of traditional healthcare, it’s no surprise that more and more people are looking for a more flexible, affordable solution. That’s where Altrua HealthShare comes in! Recently, Altrua HealthShare was featured on the award-winning morning show The Balancing Act on Lifetime TV, with daytime television legend Montel Williams and host Olga Villaverde. Whether you’re already a Member of Altrua HealthShare or are learning about what a health share is for the first time, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss!
Transcript of the episode below:
OLGA: You know, there’s no doubt that the American healthcare system is in crisis. Many Americans don’t have access to traditional health insurance and those who do still find that the costs are exorbitant.
MONTEL: And even with traditional health insurance medical costs are getting higher and higher than ever.
OLGA: But the good news is there’s another option – health shares. Here to tell us more is
Julie Lyles Carr, bestselling author and spokesperson for Altrua Health Share. Welcome!
JULIE: Thanks for having me! I appreciate it.
MONTEL: Let’s jump right to the bottom line: what is health share?
OLGA: I haven’t heard of this.
JULIE: Okay, so health sharing is a unique thing in the market, right? We’re usually used to hearing about traditional insurance, but health sharing is when a group of people come together around a common belief, faith system, statement of standards, and they say “We’re going to share in each other’s medical needs.”
OLGA: Oh.
JULIE: They’re often called healthcare sharing ministries, HCSMs, and it’s a great option for people who are looking for something different, maybe because of cost, flexibility. It really can help with medical costs.
OLGA: Because with health care a lot of people feel alone and they feel like nobody is relating, nobody can help me out, but this is quite different.
JULIE: You have a group of people who are coming together and saying here’s what we believe, here’s how we’re going to conduct our lives and live by principles that we have, and therefore we’re going to take care of each other.
OLGA: Oh this is really educating me. Now there are a lot of myths that I want to go over, some misconceptions. Okay, number one: a health share is or is just like traditional insurance.
JULIE: It’s organized differently. Now this is a very common misconception. People think, and understandably so, “Well it’s like insurance or it is insurance.” Altrua Healthshare is NOT insurance. There is a different set of regulations and things that happen with your traditional
insurance products. With a health share, with Altrua Healthshare, because it’s organized as a 501c3, it has a ministry component to it. It has a set of guidelines and standards that members
agree to meet. Some of that has to do with healthy living, some of that has to do with spirituality, and in that way you have a community-based experience. You have members come alongside making contributions each month, and from that membership escrow, eligible medical needs
are paid from that to this community that’s gathered around this membership. And it’s important people educate themselves about this to understand the difference between these two approaches.
OLGA: All right, here’s another misconception: they won’t pay big medical bills.
JULIE: So with Altrua HealthShare, as long as it meets the membership guidelines and the level of membership that you have, those costs will be shared whether they’re big or small. And again, this is where the transparency and the guidance of those membership guidelines and people who are member services representatives really help you understand what will be shared in and what won’t.
OLGA: Okay here’s one that I have. Misconception: there’s no oversight or accountability. Not true?
JULIE: Not true. As far as looking at Altrua Healthshare, as a health share, I think there’s tremendous transparency and oversight. Now, it’s different than the regulations that guide the insurance industry, but as a 501c3 nonprofit, there are certainly things that are required to have that IRS status, and so you have that transparency of understanding how the escrow is used. There is a lot of internal checks and auditing systems. We want members to know where their
contributions are going, how it’s working, why these eligible medical needs are being met. That’s a really important part of this entire experience.
MONTEL: I got a couple of them. How about pre-existing conditions are never covered?
JULIE: Now again, this is going to depend on the health share you’re looking at. There are some
that pre-existing conditions are not going to be shared in. With Altrua HealthShare, there are pre-existing conditions that are shared in. Now what’s built into that, as you would see in the membership guidelines, are certain time frames for certain conditions.
MONTEL: Yeah, how about this one: you must be of a certain denomination or faith.
JULIE: You will find some health shares that are denomination or specificity of faith and that’s
contingent on your membership there. With Altrua HealthShare, this is a group of
people who do come around a statement of standards, it does have a faith base to it, but you don’t have to be a particular denomination or creed in order to be a member.
MONTEL: Okay, how about this one: health shares don’t help you save money.
JULIE: Now, that is one of those that we can put the data to. We find that broadly a lot of
people engaged with health shares for their healthcare are saving anywhere between 30 to 40%. We’ve seen percentages that are even higher than that with Altrua HealthShare. This all is contingent on the level of membership you’re choosing, the features that you want in that membership, but generally speaking we find that health shares can be a much less expensive way to tackle your health care challenges and issues when it comes to sharing in medical costs. OLGA: Let me ask you this. Now while this may not be right for everyone, it’s still a viable option for many, right?
JULIE: This is where that education piece is so important because you want to make sure that you understand what you’re getting into, that Altrua HealthShare is not insurance. But once you are on the membership, once you choose a level of membership that’s good for you, there are all kinds of really interesting features that you can choose to make part of your membership. So you can have built-in wellness visits, you can have telemedicine, you can have counseling. Altrua HealthShare even shares in adoption costs for certain couples, so there are a lot of different features and variations to that that do impact what your bottom line in terms of what your monthly contribution will be but it is a fantastic option, flexible, affordable for a lot of people who are looking for something different than traditional.
MONTEL: And Altrua in the name, meaning altruism, so that must be a big part of what you do, right?
JULIE: You’ve really got it. That is really part of the ethos of Altrua Healthshare, and as you said, altruism is part of that word. It is about taking care of others and our communities, to really come alongside and make investment in those communities in important ways.
OLGA: I’m sure you get a lot of feedback from members, positive, you could share?
JULIE: I get so excited about this part because, for me, when I think about if you’ve got that dream job that you want to try but you’re not going to have the benefits package that you thought you might, or if you’re wanting to launch out into something, you’re wanting to write that book, or you’re wanting to try this new business venture, what is the first thing that typically comes up? It’s, “How are we going to afford healthcare?” We have a family, a couple who has this fantastic podcast and when they started thinking about starting a family, they thought, “How are we going to do that? Like, we’ve kind of figured out how to make this work but how are we going to build our family?” and through their time as a member with Altrua HealthShare, they just had their first baby a little while ago. It’s exciting to see people be able to chase and do the things that they really dream about without feeling shackled that they aren’t able to figure out the
healthcare part of it.
MONTEL: Where can people go if they want to get more information?
JULIE: We would love for them to go to Lifetime.AHS.family and they can find all kinds of great
information, membership guidelines, statement of standards, all the stuff we’ve talked about. They’ll find that there.
OLGA: So glad you came, great information.
JULIE: Thank you so much, thanks for having me.
OLGA: And if you want more information just check out our website
MONTEL: thebalancingact.com and we’ll be back right after this.