Solidarity Health Share: A Clear Contender to Obamacare

With November being the month of open enrollment for annual health insurance renewals, many Americans who rely on the health care marketplace are finding themselves in a pickle due to scheduled increases in Obama Care premiums.  Obamacare continues to ravage Americans with 3,200 monthly premiums, 50% increases, at EVERY income level. In one Virginia city, citizens are seeing spikes as high as 247%, One option for families and individuals facing the enormous costs is to consider the merits of a health share program such as Solidarity Health Care.

Healthsharing programs can be a solid alternative for many.  Solidarity Healthshare doesn’t step on your religious freedoms, in fact they support your freedom. They also support your freedom to choose your own hospital, doctor, etc, unlike the more dogmatic Obamacare. And you also get to keep more of your hard earned money since the healthshare system is not controlled by the government. And, you also won’t receive a nasty IRS penalty.

Recently, we had a conversation with Solidarity Health Share CEO Bradley Hahn to discuss the options that his company offers and why they should be a top contender for families to consider for their health care needs.

JK: With costs of Obama Care premiums rising 50-80%, many Americans are finding the marketplace an unsustainable way of affording health insurance. How does Solidarity Health Share stand out from Obama Care?

Bradley Hahn: First of all, we’re not insurance, let me make that clear – How we distinguish ourselves from the Affordable Health Care act – or sometimes, people call it the “not so affordable care act, which it is referred to at times – is two ways. The first thing is on conscious protection – if you have a religious conscious issue with paying for abortion, contraception, sterilization, gender reassignment surgery – members of Solidarity Health Share are exempt from that mandate which is great. Also, they are exempt from the fines of the Affordable Care Act for not having insurance. We satisfy that requirement, number one. This is why that most people call us. And the second reason people join us is that the costs.  That’s getting a bigger and bigger discrepancy right here. I’ll give you an example right here; we had a potential member call here to Solidarity. They are in the state of Pennsylvania, and he currently is paying for his family a $14,000 deductible – the monthly premium was increasing from $1600 to $2400 per month.  That equates to $42,800 of out of pocket expenses before health insurance kicks in. Now, as a member of Solidarity Health Share, his family is paying $449 per month with a $1500 out of pocket annual share amount.

JK: The Obamacare fees are like a mortgage payment and then some – it just doesn’t seem very fair for these families to kind of force that on them.

Bradley Hahn: Well, that leads into the second issue you just brought up… in 2015, there were 6.7 billion people that were fined over $3 billion dollars by the individual mandate for not having insurance. I was floored by this: 37% of those had incomes of less than $25,000 had to pay the fine; 79% had incomes less than $50,000; 92% had incomes less than $75,000.  To me, it’s just unconscionable that our federal government is forcing us to buy something we can’t afford and then fine us when we can’t afford it.

JK: No doubt, it’s like being double and tripled punished and this fine just goes up and up to where you have to declare bankruptcy to be able to afford health care.

Bradley Hahn: The reason we can keep our costs so low and our monthly member contributions so low is we found a way to penetrate this whole third party payer system which is running amok right now.  What we do on behalf of our members is when one of our members they go to a hospital or a doctor and gets a bill, it’s submitted to Solidarity and we do a reference based pricing to see if it’s a fair and reasonable price not only for that procedure, but for that area of the country.

For example, knee replacement surgery in Arizona costs about $17,000; insurance companies bill them at $75,000. And so if a member of Solidarity gets knee replacement surgery there, we will push for the $17,000 price. That’s how we are saving all this money for our membership. We’re acting as stewards for our membership because we are a national not-for-profit.

JK: There are other health share companies that operate in a similar manner to #SolidarityHealthShare. Can you talk a bit about the values that your company follows?

Bradley Hahn: The values that we follow is that we are a ministry that is trying to be faithful to the Catholic Church. The reason we are following the teachings of the Catholic Church on the morals and the ethics is because it’s so well documented by the Catholic Church, and it’s so well articulated. Plus, the founders are Catholic and we are coming together working together with other Christians. Even some non-Christians are joining us because we have a common ground on these moral issues like contraception, abortion, using drugs, gender reassignment surgery. So that’s what are morals are based on, number one. Secondly, our principals are based on that role created in the likeness and image of God – we are responsible for our bodies here – so we have to be good stewards of our bodies. We have to have moderation in things we do. Not eating too much, drinking too much, or having some type of reckless lifestyle. And so that’s the kind of health and promotion of health that we try to reach.

JK: Can anybody sign up for Solidarity Health Share?

Bradley Hahn: It’s open to everybody, as long as you follow the member guidelines just to know that any medical treatment that you have are going to follow the teachings of the Church, which a lot of Christians are very comfortable with. Our ideal sweet spot is those that are just fed up with our federal government forcing their amoral behavior on us, you know, to pay for things that we find morally objectionable. To me, it’s objectionable that I am here in DC trying to beg these senators and congressmen to say, can we please follow what’s in the United States Constitution and not force me to violate my conscience? Seems like we’re beating our head against the wall on many of these things. Solidarity is a solution because it gives our members a way out and not deal with those issues.

JK: How many members you have?

Bradley Hahn: It took us almost five years to launch Solidarity. I’m a lawyer, I’m kind of a slow learner and a skeptic and so it took us a while to vet the idea and to kind of see what the other Protestant ministries are doing and trying to see what their best practices are. I did not want to launch unless we had a perfect model set up like we have now, that’s what took us so long. We started this thing last July. I’m the second member; the other founder, Chris Mattis is the  first member. By the end of last year, we had about 350 members. Today, we hit the 1800 members mark and then we should be at 4000 by the end of the year. We are the fastest growing health share ministry right now in the country..

JK: That is fantastic! I am so happy and so happy for all of your successes!  Who is someone who you admire greatly, and whose values would line up with Solidarity Health Share?

Bradley Hahn: I would probably say my wife! Just because she’s been my motivating factor with everything I do to serve the Church. She’s the one that really looked at me and said, ‘Brad, the founder of Solidarity needs your help, they are asking for your legal expertise here, you must help them, your church needs a solution. I just said ‘yes dear’.

JK: That’s what we wives like to hear! It sounds like Solidarity Health Share is a success.

Bradley Hahn: We’re making a big push right now – because we realize at Solidarity that the decision maker on the budget, speaking about my own family household right now is that my wife does the budgeting in our house – the moms in this country are so concerned about conscience protection as well.

We’re really trying to reach out to the great women in this country who value God not only in the home but also what they pay for healthcare. So so that’s really been resonating with a lot of great mothers that are protecting their family financially and also protecting them spiritually so they don’t have to spiritually cooperate with evil.