Another week, another new discovery about what's in ObamaCare—long after we passed it.
One of the things that's in it is a massive exemption for religious medical-sharing arrangements.
"It's gotten little attention, but it's true: The individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act requires all Americans to have health insurance or face penalties, but members of medical-sharing ministries are exempt from the individual mandate that will be enforced beginning in 2015. "It's there because of the work of then-Congressmen Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat and Sens. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, who fought to add the exemption to the law. It's the same principle that allowed for the Amish to be exempted from the individual mandate—with the crucial difference that it's a lot more practical to join Medi-Share than it is to become Amish."Boy, conservatives are going to love this. They get to totally opt out of the hated individual mandate, and all they have to do is to profess to be Christians, which they hardly need any encouragement to do.
And they really do get to opt out of everything.
"Here's how it works: To join Medi-Share, members must pledge their Christian faith and promise not to drink, take drugs, or have sex outside of a traditional marriage. A reference from a minister may also be requested. Certain pre-existing conditions render applicants ineligible, while chronic issues such as obesity sometimes lead to acceptance into the program contingent on undergoing wellness counseling. "The coverage doesn't include products of 'un-Biblical lifestyles,' such as contraception or substance rehab, or some preventive medicine, including colonoscopies and annual mammograms. Those policies lead to lower costs for all members, Meggs said.
"When you have a medical bill, you submit it to the organization. If it meets the eligibility requirements and your annual medical expenses have exceeded the threshold in the plan you signed up for, the bill is 'shared'—that is, covered."The catch is that this is technically not "insurance," because Medi-Share is not legally required to cover anything. It will pay for your care if it has enough money in the till, but if the money isn't there, your only appeal is to the Big Guy himself. Of course, you might say that the same is true of regular insurance, so the only difference here is that there is no government regulator monitoring Medi-Share to ensure its solvency.
If you think that's not such a great loss, considering the recent track record of regulators when it comes to ensuring solvency, then you can appreciate the positive side of the ledger. Medi-Share is an exemption, not just from the individual mandate, but from every important aspect of ObamaCare. There is no "guaranteed issue" for pre-existing conditions, the plan is allowed to "cherry pick" a healthier demographic with a relatively clean-living lifestyle, and they are exempt from regulations which mandate coverage for contraception and certain kinds of preventive screenings.
Talk about a way to supercharge ObamaCare's "adverse selection death spiral": give one of the nation's healthiest demographics—respectable, clean-living, middle-class folks—a way to completely escape ObamaCare and its insurance exchanges. And if anybody ever tries to shut it down, they can argue, quite plausibly, that it's a violation of religious freedom.
It makes me think it's going to take a pretty big act of faith to believe that ObamaCare is going to work, when so many can take advantage of this kind of end run around it.
RealClearPolitics.com/DailyDebate
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