Bills

There are a lot of bills associated with getting this sick, as you can imagine. We recently did the 'get the bills together and send them off' thing, but with a difference.

Most people have a health insurance company, and they either have the doctor/hospital bill the insurance company directly, or all they have to do is send the bill they get to the company and it somehow magically gets taken care of; well, except for some that come back to you as expense that is not covered by your particular policy. How many come back like that is a function of how 'good' your policy is. But in our case, we are one of those millions of people that you hear about in the news who do not have health insurance.

Unlike many of those millions we chose the situation we are in very deliberately: we are part of an association of Christians who have banded together for the purpose of sharing our medical expenses. We agree to share a fixed amount each month with others in the group who have medical expenses that month. If there are more expenses than member share amounts available for the month, expenses are prorated. If less, then some members who may still have outstanding bills from previous months receive more help. This means we are individually responsible to pay our own bills, and when our need is published to the members we receive a number of checks from members to help us pay our medical bills. The checks are often accompanied with get well cards and promises to pray for us.

Although we have sent plenty of checks and get well cards out, we have only experienced the process from the helping side. Now we will get to see the other end: how needs are met. In the first place, we have pointed out to hospitals and doctors that we are not insured although we do belong to Samaritan Ministry, and many have graciously given us large discounts to help us meet our commitments. We only submitted our first list of bills last Wednesday, so we have not been through the whole process yet--but we can't wait to see how it all works from the needs end as the checks start coming in.

For anyone interested, Samaritan Ministries is at www.samaritanministries.org. It is one of at least three such organizations run by Christians for sharing medical expenses without insurance. Kind of reminds me of the early settlers getting together to rebuild a neighbor's barn that had burned down. There is a satisfaction that comes from sending off a check directly to someone who needs it to pay a bill, and I am looking forward to a sense of thankfulness toward those who help me, as well as the Lord for making it possible.