Maine to Offer Insurance Regulation Exemption to Health Ministries

by Jen Thorpe | More from this Blogger

18 May 2011 09:00 PM

Maine may soon allow church based organizations that sell health care coverage to be exempt from the state regulations that insurance companies are required to adhere to. Those in favor of this idea feel that these ministries are not actually selling insurance. Those against it feel that what the ministries are doing is in many ways equivalent to how an insurance company functions.

There is a bill called LD 950 that will be voted on by lawmakers in Maine soon. The wording in this bill would exempt groups referred to as "health care sharing ministries" from the state regulations that insurance companies are required to follow. One regulation that the ministries would be exempt from would be the requirement to provide health care coverage to a person that has a pre-existing condition.

Another exemption would be in regards to how much money the health care sharing ministries would be allowed to spend on administrative salaries and other costs. Right now, federal regulations require insurance companies that sell health insurance to spend at least 80% of the money they make from premiums on things that provide health care to their customers, or things that can reasonably be expected to improve the health of their customers. Insurance companies are forbidden to push administrative costs, and the salaries of their employees, into the 80% that is supposed to be used on health care.

Lawmakers who vote to pass this bill into law may feel like Senator Michael Thibodeau, the man who sponsored this bill, feels. He says that regulators from across the country have attacked health ministries, because they claim that these groups are selling insurance.

Thibodeau insists that the health plans offered by the ministries do not operate like insurance companies do, and therefore should be protected from the potential of legal actions brought to them by regulators like the Maine Bureau of Insurance. He also has pointed out that eleven other states have chosen to exempt health ministries from insurance regulations.

Lawmakers who do not vote for this bill may feel like Washington insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler did, when he ordered the Samaritan Ministries International Group to stop operating in the state of Washington, forever. He felt that the group was selling health insurance without following the regulations that the state requires of insurance companies.

It has been stated that the people who are paying money to a health sharing ministry have absolutely no guarantee that the people in charge of the ministry will, in fact, use that money to help the person pay for his or her health care needs. Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman has testified that in other states, there have been complaints filed against health sharing ministries. In one of these cases, a jury found that officials of a health sharing ministry spent nearly $15 million dollars on luxury houses, motorcycles, expensive cars, and high salaries for employees.

The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, which is based in Illinois,(and not Maine), requested that Senator Thibodeau sponsor the bill. These types of ministries require a person to sign a statement that says the person will abstain from smoking, excessive drinking, and premarital sex. They might exclude people who are homosexual, and will exclude people who do not have the same "sincerely held beliefs" as the ministry does.

Image by Vintage Collective on Flickr

Learn more about Jen Thorpe

I am currently writing for the Insurance, Deals, Genealogy, and Special Needs blogs.I have also written for the Parenting,Money, Homeschooling, Preschool, Health, Food and Weightloss blogs.

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