A Christian Health Insurance Company Will Give Americans More Control and Better Options
Americans, in general, are innovators, dreamers, and entrepreneurs, and many of us adhere to the Christian faith. Yet, somehow, when it comes to our health care system, we have become passive spectators, helpless and unimaginative, submitting to a system that promotes an anti-Christian anthropology that disregards the dignity of the human person.
Instead of youthful creativity rising to the challenge, we see selfish, un-American responses – and even violence, like the horrific murder of the United HealthCare CEO last December.
Is this the American spirit? To complain on podcasts or social media with no solution to offer your country – or worse?
Americans are rightly frustrated with health insurance. I am, too. That’s why my colleagues and I decided to build the nation’s first Christian health insurance company from the ground up; we wanted to reimagine how a health insurer can empower your family rather than control your health care. Presidio Healthcare is on track to complete the licensure process in Texas this spring and begin enrolling members this summer. More states will follow.
A Different Approach
Why, you may ask, did we spend time building a health insurance company and not some alternative system like a health-cost sharing service?
First, because health insurance is good.
The availability of health insurance that limits your family’s exposure to catastrophic financial risk is a sign of a well-functioning modern society that values freedom. You should have the freedom to live your life without the fear of going bankrupt if a family member has a heart attack, is diagnosed with cancer, or has a major accident. A properly functioning health insurance product provides that security.
Additionally, there is another societal benefit of health insurance that isn’t fully appreciated: Unlike other forms of insurance, health insurance functions as the primary catalyst for our society to organize itself to create healthcare innovations that are nearly miraculous.
Meet Curtis Means of Alabama, the youngest baby ever born; his mother was only 21 weeks along when he entered the world. Saving this child’s life required a functioning hospital equipped to care for a premature baby; Curtis spent 275 days in the NICU. This costs a lot of money, potentially millions of dollars, but there are facilities nationwide that can handle the job. How? Because we have built an infrastructure with just enough predictability that these emergency efforts will be compensated. Organizations like ours can serve both low-dollar patients and extremely high-dollar patients like Curtis Means, whereas a healthcare-sharing service might not.
Only a system leveraging a functioning health insurance market can create that predictability and motivate expenditures to develop incredible healthcare advancements. Neither cash-pay schemes for low-dollar medical services nor health-sharing structures that aren’t legally required to pay large medical bills are sustainable or scalable solutions. They only seem to work in an economy where the “savings” can be absorbed by a much larger proportion of insured participants. They can only exist in the small margins of an insurance-based system. These models contribute nothing to the predictability needed to innovate for more pro-life healthcare services like caring for premature babies.
What Good Insurance Should Do
Oof course, health insurance has many corrupting aspects that Americans despise. Let me sum these up in one word: control. Current health insurance attempts to control your healthcare by limiting the network of doctors you can see, creating rules around seeing specialty doctors, and, at times, falsely abusing claim-denial procedures in order to cut costs.
None of these flaws are intrinsic to health insurance, and our team has set out to eliminate all of them.
First, health insurance should help you find a doctor you value, not limit your choices. Second, your health insurer has the data to help you find savings whenever possible — and should do so. Lastly, healthcare is a human service, which means it should enable actual human beings to help members when they need it to navigate a complex healthcare system during a difficult time in their lives.
These are some practical ways to move from complaining to problem-solving. But let’s dream further.
Going Further
One of the main things a health insurer can do is contract with the massive amount of providers needed to serve the diverse healthcare needs of its members. This is called a network. Traditional health insurers typically use this network to steer members to low-cost providers, which is good.
But I want this process to go a step further. For devout Christians, it is vital to find doctors who respect their values. They need doctors who are counseling young moms on how to deal with babies with disabilities in the womb, talking to our children and teenagers about their health, and navigating complicated topics like which vaccines are truly necessary and which are not. How those doctors view the dignity of the human person and his or her Creator will alter how they deliver care in many scenarios.
Americans need a platform designed to help families find physicians who align with their values. If it’s your insurance plan, then you should be in control. A proper marketplace has options, and the world of healthcare should be no exception.
Daniel Cruz is the founder and CEO of Presidio Healthcare, America’s first pro-life, Christian health insurance company.