Figuring out insurance as a self-employed couple is really hard and scary. For a long time, Drew kept his 9-5 because we felt like we didn’t really have options that made sense. In fact, we get asked about this a ton! This question has hit my inbox so many times that we created a canned response to answer it. And today, I thought I’d share with all of you what we do for health insurance because Drew and I are both self-employed entrepreneurs.
This can be a stressful part of owning your own business and I’m hoping sharing my experience might help someone else who is in the middle of making this decision. We joined an organization called Christian Healthcare Ministries or CHM this past January and have been really happy. Here are a few things that might be helpful in determining if it could be the right fit for you and help you with your health insurance needs as an entrepreneur.
CHM is a cost-sharing ministry.
What this means is that every month people pay their dues and all of that money goes into a pool to share medical costs. The way CHM sums it up is this: affordable, biblical, and compassionate faith-based healthcare cost solution for Christians in all 50 states and around the world.
Recognized under the national healthcare law, CHM isn’t insurance, but is thousands of Christians uniting to share in paying each other’s medical bills. When you go to the doctors office, you claim self-pay and then you submit your bills to CHM after. This means you don’t have an insurance card BUT this also cuts the bills significantly because they aren’t going back and forth between the insurance and the provider.
No “out of network” expenses.
One great blessing is you have more freedom in choosing where you go for care. Since you aren’t covered by a network, you can choose the right facilities and hospitals for you. Along with that, you don’t get things covered like preventative healthcare but we still opt to do a physical and pay out of pocket because it’s truly not that expensive and worth it. Since both of us are very healthy people, we’ve only used CHM for when we had our miscarriage (and surgery) but beyond that we are happy to pay for any preventative care whether that be a physical, chiropractic care, etc.
It is a ministry.
One of the best parts of this ministry is each month we get a letter telling us what our money went towards whether it was Billy’s cancer treatment or to help a new baby in the NICU. To me, this is how we were designed to help one another and I am proud to be a part of something that not only supports our health in our times of need but gives to others when we are well. Whether you go with CHM or not, the most important thing is that you don’t let health insurance be the reason you don’t make the leap to chase your dreams.
Ready to make the leap to working for yourself?
Tune in for more tips on what to do before leaving your 9-5!
[…] What Do You Do For Health Insurance When You’re Self-Employed? – Jenna Kutcher […]
I posted a question on this in one of Jenna’s groups and she directed me back to this blog post – which is perfect! I’m so glad to hear that she had many of the same reservations that I am currently having about insurance, society’s dependence on insurance, and options outside of the corporate norm. Thank you Jenna! I will definitely be looking into CHM.
Will you be doing a follow up to this post now that you’re through with pregnancy/delivery?
I love that you have covered CHM. We are Dave Ramsay followers and he recommends them, too, but I’ve been skeptical. My husband is trying to talk me in to it. Right now, I still have a 9-5 with insurance. At one point, we did a medical savings account and then immediately had a 3 day hospital stay, so it wiped out our big deductible. So we’re back on my corporate insurance. Trying to get things together to make a different leap to CHM. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.