Thu. May 9th, 2024

Health insurance is a rip-off. Plain and simple. Even if you get it “cheap” on the health exchange you still have a $5K to $6K deductible per person. The health sharing ministries have been another option that I have recommended. They are cheaper and cover most things. They are not perfect. Now there are other health sharing options (Sedera, etc.) out there that are not “ministries”.

In my last few years in practice, I personally used Liberty HealthShare. I never needed them until about a year ago. For over six years I have heard mostly good things about them. The problem was that they were erratic. For a year or so they would pay for a DPC membership. Then they stopped that. Then new “rules” started to appear and they needed codes and notes. That may have changed, too.

I had one patient have an MI with subsequent catheterization. They were supposed to cover it. They eventually did but not until he was in collections by the hospital.

My situation is very straightforward. I had a screening colonoscopy. I helped negotiate the price down. I paid cash and submitted the bill to Liberty HealthShare. It took 10.5 months to get my money back.

I had eye surgery. I helped negotiate the price to $5K. I paid cash for it. With the deductible, I was owed about $3600. This took 11.5 months to get my money back.

In summary, I did get my money back but not without tons of emails. The question for your patients is whether they can afford to wait almost a year to get their money back. Luckily I could. Unfortunately, many of your patients may not and if they did not pay upfront to the hospital then they would be put in collections like my patient was. That is not great for their credit.

Please share your experience with Liberty HealthShare in the comments. Maybe yours is better.

40160cookie-checkMy Experience With Liberty HealthShare (and it’s not great)
(Visited 321 times, 1 visits today)

By Douglas Farrago, MD

Douglas Farrago MD is board certified in the specialty of Family Practice. He is the inventor of a product called the Knee Saver which is currently in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Knee Saver and its knock-offs are worn by many major league baseball catchers. He is also the inventor of the CryoHelmet used by athletes for head injuries as well as migraine sufferers. From 2001 – 2011, Dr. Farrago was the editor and creator of the Placebo Journal which ran for 10 full years. Described as the Mad Magazine for doctors, he and the Placebo Journal were featured in the Washington Post, US News and World Report, the AP, and the NY Times. Douglas Farrago, MD received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia in 1987, his Masters of Education degree in the area of Exercise Science from the University of Houston in 1990, and his Medical Degree from the University of Texas at Houston in 1994. His residency training occurred way up north at the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine. In his final year, he was elected Chief Resident by his peers. Dr. Farrago has practiced family medicine for twenty-three years, first in Auburn, Maine and now in Forest, Virginia. He founded Forest Direct Primary Care in 2014, which quickly filled in 18 months. Dr. Farrago still blogs every day on his website Authenticmedicine.com and lectures worldwide about the present crisis in our healthcare system and the effect it has on the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Farrago’s has written three books on direct primary care: The Official Guide to Starting Your Own Direct Primary Care Practice, The Direct Primary Care Doctor’s Daily Motivational Journal and Slowing the Churn in Direct Primary Care (While Also Keeping Your Sanity) are all best sellers in this genre. He is a leading expert in direct primary care model and lectures medical students, residents, and doctors on how to start their own DPC practice. He retired from clinical medicine in October, 2020.

4 thoughts on “My Experience With Liberty HealthShare (and it’s not great)”
  1. Yours is a similar experience to others I have helped convert over to Sedera. Personally, I am a member of the Sedera community and have had a great experience with them.

  2. We’ve had quite a few patients have issues with Liberty — many of our new patients are signing up with Sedera, we haven’t heard anything negative about them so far!

  3. Liberty, Sedera, and all the other “sharing” groups rest on similar organizational principles and unregulated legal footing. Sedera’s CEO has himself complained that some religious sharing ministries are too parsimonious. The pressures that lead health sharing communities toward parsimony/bureaucracy may not differ from community to community – and they are not all unlike the same pressures faced by actual insurers. It’s problematic to expect better results from sharing communities than from insurers, even if the sharing communities are religiously based. Can more be expected of FOR-PROFIT Sedera when it serves its “community” members the same deregulation without the fellowship?

  4. Liberty has all kinds of legal issues, they settled with the Ohio AG along with their vendors and they also have a Class Action… many people are owed in excess of 100K, it is a disastor and finally people are starting to see i… Aliera was another disastor… watch for more and more Healthshare issues as there is zero regulation… it is awfull…

Comment Here and Join the Discussion