The Affordable Care Act put Christian insurance alternatives on the map. What happens to them when it goes away?
Despite President Donald Trump’s executive order to begin dismantling Obamacare, a record number of Americans signed up for marketplace plans during the 2017 enrollment period, which ended Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the number of Christians taking advantage of religious exemptions to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) also reached an all-time high. As of January, well over 625,000 believers belong to health care sharing ministries—more than triple as many as when the Obama administration enacted the legislative overhaul of the health insurance market in 2010.
Nashville videographer Matt Horvath joined Medi-Share last month, after leaving his employer’s plan when he started his own business. He and his wife settled on health care sharing—where fellow members pay a few hundred dollars a month to cover each other’s major medical bills—after they struggled to find major insurance carriers in their state that offered individual plans or affordable options through the ACA marketplace.
Horvath and other members of such ministries (provided the organizations have been functioning since before the year 2000) are exempt from the ACA’s individual mandate, which penalizes Americans without health insurance. Days after Trump took office, adviser Kellyanne Conway indicated that the president would not be enforcing the mandate any longer. The eventual end to the individual mandate will do away with the need for a religious exemption.
Between that announcement and Trump’s executive order urging agencies to ease ACA requirements, “it’s a pretty significant step,” said Anthony Hopp, spokesman for Samaritan Ministries. “Things are definitely in motion. But we anticipated that with Trump.” ...
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