A healthcare sharing ministry — often shortened to “healthshare” — is a group of people who agree to help pay each other’s medical bills. Members contribute a set amount every month, and that money goes toward other members’ eligible medical needs. It’s a community arrangement rooted in religious practice, and it has grown into a market where the largest ministries share billions of dollars in medical bills each year.
How sharing works
In a typical arrangement, you submit medical bills to the ministry. If a bill meets the ministry’s published guidelines, it’s approved for sharing, and the monthly contributions of the membership are used to pay it. Each ministry publishes guidelines — a document that defines what’s shareable, what isn’t, and how much members must pay themselves before sharing begins.
That “amount you pay first” goes by different names: Medi-Share calls it the Annual Household Portion (AHP), Samaritan Ministries calls it the Initial Unscheduled Amount (IUA). It works something like a deductible, but the mechanics and terminology differ from insurance, and the amount is defined by the ministry’s guidelines, not a policy contract.
How is this different from insurance?
This is the most important thing to understand: healthcare sharing is not insurance.
- No guarantee. Insurance is a binding contract. Sharing is a voluntary commitment — ministries state plainly that sharing is not guaranteed. Guidelines can change, and a ministry can decline to share a bill that doesn’t meet them.
- Different regulation. Sharing ministries aren’t licensed as insurers and aren’t regulated the way insurance companies are. In many states, specific laws recognize and exempt qualifying ministries; a few states restrict how they operate.
- Faith requirements. Members typically sign a statement of faith and agree to lifestyle commitments. These aren’t decorative — they’re part of the legal definition of a qualifying ministry, and ministries can (and do) decline membership or sharing over them.
- Pre-existing conditions. Most ministries limit or phase in sharing for conditions you had before joining. The rules differ enormously between ministries and programs — this is one of the most important things to compare.
What does it cost?
Monthly contributions vary by ministry, program tier, household size, and age. To give a real-world sense of scale: Medi-Share’s own published examples put a single member in their 30s at roughly $150–$250 per month with a $12,000 AHP, while Samaritan Ministries’ Classic program lists monthly shares between $210 and $925 depending on household size and age. That’s the kind of spread that makes side-by-side comparison worth your time.
Who it works for
Sharing tends to work well for people who: qualify comfortably under a ministry’s faith statement, are relatively healthy or can absorb the unshared amount, want lower monthly costs than insurance, and value being part of a faith community that helps each other directly.
It tends to work poorly for people who: need guaranteed coverage for a known ongoing condition, can’t risk a large unshared amount before sharing kicks in, or wouldn’t meet a ministry’s faith and lifestyle commitments. If any of those describe you, a licensed insurance product may be the better tool — and no honest ministry will tell you otherwise.
The honest bottom line
Millions of American households use sharing ministries and are satisfied — medical bills genuinely get shared, and the communities are real. But the model’s promise rests on reading the guidelines before you join, not the brochure. That’s what this site exists to help with.