Frustrated with Traditional Healthcare? with Lauren Gajdek

This faith and finance podcast is underwritten in part by Christian Healthcare Ministries. Are you finding it increasingly challenging to find affordable healthcare? Christian Healthcare Ministries is a budget-friendly, biblical, and compassionate healthcare cost-sharing alternative that aligns with your Christian values. And it's available in all 50 states and around the world.

Learn more at chministries.org faithbuy. You might be surprised to learn that a majority of Americans are satisfied with their healthcare insurance, but the rest are more than a little dissatisfied. Hi, I'm Rob West. A vocal minority of health insurance policy holders are frustrated with their insurers for any number of legitimate reasons. If you're in this group, you don't want to miss today's show. Lauren Gydeck joins us with details about an efficient, affordable alternative to health insurance. And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, our guest Lauren Gydeck is the Vice President of Communications and Radio at Christian Healthcare Ministries, the oldest faith-based medical cost-sharing organization in the country and an underwriter of this program. She always brings a message of hope to those who are frustrated with traditional health insurance. Lauren, great to have you back. So good to be back on the show with you.

Thank you. Lauren, we're going to talk about the blessing that medical cost-sharing can be, but you hear from many folks who are in fact fed up with traditional health insurance. What are the typical reasons they give? Well, there are a few, you know, the policies that they have can be complicated. That would be one thing, you know, whereas at CHM we have worked to make all of our programs more similar as far as what we'll share for, but also, you know, I think one of the biggest issues is something that's really behind the scenes and that is that there's no pricing transparency.

So you as the patient don't really understand what you're being charged for your health care and what that does is it drives up the cost of health care and then insurance will pass that along to their policy holders and that's why you hear stories of, you know, these deductibles that are, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 and it's a real issue. So at CHM we really do believe in pricing transparency. Yeah, that's really helpful. Now when I opened the program I was drawing from a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and it found that most Americans actually rate their health insurance as good or even excellent, but there are some real qualifications to that, aren't there?

Yeah, I would say so. You know, it's one of those things where people generally seem to be pretty happy with it if they haven't had to use it. So, you know, they might have some subsidies from the government on the health care exchanges and but when they have actual experience with submitting a claim and going through that process, that's when you find a lot of dissatisfied and unhappy customers. Yeah, and that doesn't speak to very well to the very well to the health insurance companies.

The more you engage, the more dissatisfied you are. Now Christian Healthcare Ministries offers a night and day difference, in my opinion, to health insurance and you all have been doing this for a really long time. So just give us a quick snapshot of the history of CHM.

Absolutely. Well, CHM is an alternative to health insurance and we've been around for a long time. So we were founded over 40 years ago in 1981 and during that time we have satisfied nearly 12 billion dollars in medical bills.

That's billion with a B. And people are just, you know, like you said, they're fed up with insurance and how they're treated through those companies and they're looking for something that aligns with their faith and upholds their values and so that's where CHM steps in. Well, a lot of our listeners have found it to be a perfect fit for them but if they're just hearing about it for the first time, share with them how medical cost sharing works.

Yeah, I'd be glad to do that. So like I said, it's not insurance so there is no contract and members are considered to be self-pay, which is a little bit scary, sounds a little scary at first, but again I point to our long history and we do share 100% of medical bills that qualify according to our guidelines. We have multiple programs that people can choose from, you know, all the way from $98 a month up to $255 a month per person and you can actually have different family members participate at different programs. So you can really mix and match what we offer to meet your budget and, you know, to meet your healthcare needs which is really nice. It really is and it's a wonderful blessing because there's no network.

You can choose your provider and the savings are passed on to the patients. Lauren, always appreciate your partnership and your time. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Folks, if you want to learn more, go to chministries.org faithfi. That's chministries.org slash faithfi. That was Lauren Guidak with Christian Healthcare Ministries back with your calls after this.

Stick around. Imagine having biblical financial wisdom delivered to your inbox every week, helping you integrate your faith and financial decisions for the glory of God at faithfi.com. You can join a community of over 70,000 people who are already receiving our weekly wisdom email filled with articles, videos, podcasts, and exclusive offers on resources that will deepen your understanding of biblical stewardship. Start your journey today by creating your faithfi account at faithfi.com. Just click sign up. Healthcare is complicated.

It doesn't have to be. If you don't love how your health insurance works, maybe it's time to leave traditional health insurance behind. Take charge of your healthcare with Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM offers you flexibility. Enroll anytime.

Choose your own provider and select the program that fits your needs and budget. CHM is the original faith-based way of taking care of your medical bill costs. Learn more at chministries.org slash faithfi. Great to have you with us today on Faith in Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions. Let's head to Nashville. Hi Jim.

How can I help? Hey Rob. Trying to find out if there is anything available as a smaller interest loan to take my credit card debt down or help with it.

Yeah. I probably have $45,000 in credit card debt which is okay with me. I don't have a problem paying it and paying it down and we're retiring this year. So I'm just wanting, we've done all the consolidating and moving back and forth to the zero percent interest and all those things and it's just come to the point now that I'd like to find a low interest rate. I don't know if the financial advisors have anything that they could talk to me about to help me with that or I'm not paying no 29 percent. I'm only paying like I think it's 14 percent at the time. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Jim. Let me ask just a couple of questions here and I could certainly appreciate what you're trying to accomplish. So you sound like you have good cash flow. You're able to make the minimum. You're just trying to get the interest rate down.

Was this a result of kind of a single isolated or a couple of events that are behind you or are you continuing to add to this? No, we're not adding to it at all but what it was was I remodeled our house over the last 10, 12 years and I know it was going to be, you know, expensive to do and I didn't have a problem, like I say, working to pay my bills. I'm not looking to file bankruptcy unless that's really the, you know, the smartest thing to do but I don't, I've never felt that filing bankruptcy is a smart thing to do. Yeah, no, and I would agree with you and I think as Christ followers we have an obligation to honor our commitments. If we're forced into bankruptcy at some point, I think that's separate and aside from our desire and need to pay it back. So where do you go from here?

Well, I agree with you. I would, you know, put the balance transfer game behind you and not do that any longer, especially because, you know, each time you do it, even though you could get an interest rate that's lower, perhaps even a 0%, you are going to erode your credit score over time and you've got that fee right up front, typically 2 or 3%, you know, on the balance that you're transferring, you know, even before you get into it. My preferred approach, Jim, you know, rather than you going out and seeking a loan, you know, like a personal loan, I mean, right now, you know, a bank personal loan is going to run you north of 10% for an unsecured loan. You know, if you have stellar credit, there's a chance you could get that lower.

But I would say you're probably looking in this environment at, you know, 9 plus percent. So I think for that reason, I'd rather you just leave these right where they are, and look at something called debt management or credit counseling. If you listen to this program, you've probably heard me mention that. But essentially, the way that works is, each of these creditors has what they call a credit counseling rate that's substantially lower than their prevailing rate. And so as long as you work with a nonprofit credit counseling agency, we recommend Christian credit counselors. They're nationwide, they've worked with 1000s of our listeners, and we literally get, you know, just about every week, somebody calling in just saying, Hey, I just want to tell you what a great experience this was. I mean, they're just good at what they do. And they're doing it for the right reasons.

They want to help God's people. What would happen is they would pay your bills, you would pay one payment to them, they would send it on to each creditor. And by working through a credit counseling agency, the accounts would be closed, whichever ones you put into the program. And then they would drop the rate to the credit counseling rate, which would typically be somewhere between zero and 8%. It could go a little higher than that, depending on which creditor you have. But the combination of one level monthly payment, because you wouldn't have a payment that declines as the balance comes down, it'd be level for the full length of the program.

On top of the reduction in interest rate will have you paying this back on average 80% faster than if you try to do it on your own, which means, you know, in your case, potentially 10s of 1000s of dollars in interest saved, that would be my preferred way it avoids you having to go out and get a new loan paying the fees associated with that. And my experience is just that when you get into a program like this, it leads to you ultimately getting out of debt and staying there a little better than you going out and getting a new consolidation loan to roll it all up. But is that something you're familiar with? And how does that sound to you?

That sounds fantastic. And it's, I've heard you talk about it as in being familiar with it. No, I'm not only from listening to you. Like I say, we don't have problem paying our bills. You know, we've got new cars, we've got a fairly new house, but I'm not paying big house money. But I did, I have refinanced the house to consolidate back when it started getting stupid. And then, you know, I didn't stop to a point, but it is a two person household that it wasn't just me. But obviously, that is something I will that hurt your credit doing that?

It's a good question, Jim. And the answer is yes and no, no, from the sense that there is nothing in the credit scoring algorithm. So take the FICO score, for instance, the fact that you're in a credit counseling program, or what's called debt management does not factor into the credit score at all. So it won't affect your credit score. The only thing that could affect it is remember I said that these accounts are closed when they go into the program or at least suspended. And anytime you close a credit card, it can cause your credit score to move around. But that's really the only issue that would affect your credit. The fact that you're in this program would not hurt you.

It doesn't factor into the algorithm. Alrighty, that sounds fantastic. Good.

Well, let's do this. You can reach out to them Jim on the web at christiancreditcounselors.org. That's christiancreditcounselors.org. And, you know, they'll be great to work with if you'd rather call the numbers 800-557-1985.

That's 800-557-1985. And they'll be great to work with. Just let us know how it goes when you're done. I appreciate your time, Rob.

Thank you very kindly. Yes, sir. Thank you for being on the program today. We appreciate you.

Let's go to Texas. Hi, Julie. How can I help you? Yes. My husband and I are both 77.

I'm totally blind. He has a number of health problems. And we'd like to get an irrevocable trust, but we don't have very much money. And I've heard of elder law, but I don't know how to get a hold of them.

Yeah. Let me just ask quickly, and I'm not an attorney, but I can give you some general advice. And I think your best option is to seek out an elder law attorney who's skilled in this area, and I can help you get connected. But what is it you're trying to accomplish?

Why? And you mentioned an irrevocable trust, which typically we, you know, we'll have folks seeking out a revocable trust, meaning you can change it. But was there something specific you were trying to accomplish with the irrevocable trust? We just don't want to go into probate when one of us passes away. Got it. We're a community property law here in Texas, and I don't know if one of us dies if the other one has to go through probate or I don't know how any of that works. Got it.

Yeah. So you would be looking at what's called a revocable trust, which just simply means you're not actually relinquishing ownership of it to the trust. You maintain that ownership and you can change the trust at any time, but it does avoid probate.

Now, for somebody who doesn't have a whole lot in the way of assets, typically this might be more than you need, you know, starting with, it can cost you several thousand dollars to put it in place. And there are other ways to avoid probate depending on what you have. But one of the primary benefits of the revocable trust is, and this is one of the main benefits, is that it allows assets to bypass the probate process after you die.

Why would you want to do that? Well, it saves time. It can reduce legal costs.

It provides some privacy and you can have a little bit more control. So what you're going to want to do is connect with an attorney and talk through that. The way to avoid that without having a trust would be what's called a transfer on death deed for a house and then beneficiaries for life insurance and investment accounts, things like that. But here's what I want to do. I want to get you connected with a certified kingdom advisor there in Texas, Julie, who can then refer you to a godly elder law attorney. So stay on the line and we'll talk a bit off the air.

We'll be right back. As the leading advocate for the Christian financial industry, Kingdom Advisors serves the public by promoting the integration of a biblical worldview across every aspect of the financial services industry. And we serve a growing network of thousands of Christian financial professionals, equipping and empowering them to carry biblical financial wisdom to their clients, peers, and community. For more information, visit kingdomadvisors.com.

That's kingdomadvisors.com. Hey, thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance. We're grateful to have you along with us today. Let's head back to the phones.

Ohio's where we're going next. Hi, Edward. Thanks for calling, sir. Go ahead. Thank you for your program and all the wisdom that you provide to so many every day. We really appreciate that. Well, that's very kind. Thank you.

Thank you. My question is whether I should consider purchasing a long term care insurance policy, Rob. Yeah, you certainly could look at it. I think the key is just always affordability. And, you know, if there's no question that, you know, this is probably your biggest risk in this season of life. 70% of Americans age 65 and older will need some form of long term care, I think, on average, it ends up being like two years to somewhere between two and three years. And it can run $10,000 a month if you need, you know, full nursing care.

And so, you know, the impact to your assets, you know, is real. If you have under 200,000 and investable assets net worth, I'd probably say, don't certainly don't worry about it, just rely on, you know, Medicaid, over 2 million, you could self insure. But the majority of people find themselves in that middle gap where, you know, there is something to be said about having long term care insurance, but it's very expensive. So for example, you know, a 75 year old would be, you know, female might pay $12,000 annually for a policy with, you know, $165,000 in initial benefits. And so you'd need to be in relatively good health to qualify at age 77. Many insurers reject, you know, about half of the applicants at age 75 and older, but there are options out there. So long as you could afford it, and it's not only just given the affordability right now, but it's the ability to, you know, absorb those premium increases in the future. They can't do it individually with just your policy versus another they have to do it across the board, but they do. And they've been significant just because of the rising cost of health care. So I think would it be great to offset that risk and have you know that you have a daily benefit that you could put toward, you know, in home care or nursing care or, you know, home health or something like that?

Sure. And I'd love for you to have an inflation rider and make sure you look at the waiting period and some of those things. But I would want to make sure that it doesn't create a financial hardship for you now or in the future. And if it does, it might just be better served just to take that money and just continue to sock it away and kind of build up your nest egg there. Does that make sense though?

It does, Rob. I looked into it a bit and it looks as though I could get something that would provide about $5,000 per month in coverage, but that would cost probably about $600 a month to secure that. So $5,000 a month if, you know, the average cost today is approaching $10,000 and understanding that it would probably increase appreciably over the years that the $5,000 a month doesn't seem to be all that much for what I would be paying for it each month over the years to come. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, that's kind of my dilemma. That is maybe the best I can get at this point in time in my life. I'm not sure that that really makes a lot of sense. I don't know.

And I wanted to seek your advice on that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's right. I mean, that's on the low end, but it seems like maybe the coverage is a little lesser. I mean, at 77, I would expect premiums to be somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000 a year, you know, for a policy that's going to give you the features that you want.

But here's the reality. I mean, just having something to offset the expense would be nice. Because as I said, it could be 100,000 a year for nursing home, it could be 50,000 a year, you know, for home health, and without insurance, you know, 100% of that's going to be out of pocket.

So that gives you more options and some independence relieves the family burden. And so that, you know, I think that could be a great tool for you. And again, even if it doesn't cover 100% of everything you're looking for, you know, it's going to help to shoulder that burden somewhat. The other thing you could do would be to look at, you know, a hybrid with a life insurance policy that provides a little bit of a death benefit, or you could do a return of premiums so that, you know, you get some back if it's not used. You can do annuities with long term care insurance riders.

I mean, there are other ways to go. But I would say if you're relatively healthy, and you can afford the premiums, you know, having that policy to shoulder some of these expenses in this season of life, I think could be a real blessing to you down the road. Would you be in a position to recommend any companies that I might go to with those kinds of questions?

Yeah, you know, I don't have any specifics to recommend, it does change. And it does vary based on your health status. Some companies look more favorably on one health issue versus another. So what I would recommend is you connect with an insurance agent who specializes in long term care who really knows the landscape you want to be with, you know, one of the top five players in this space that's committed to this space that, you know, prices their policies appropriately. And that's going to look favorably on kind of any health issues you have even minor ones. And having an insurance agent who knows the landscape is really important.

So if you don't have someone I'd reach out to a certified kingdom advisor there in Ohio on our website, faithfi.com and just ask for a referral to a long term care insurance agent who represents who's not captive with one company, but really represents all the big players. Okay, so sounds good. Well, thank you, Rob. I don't want to take any more of your time.

I'm sure some other folks would like to get into it. So that's been very helpful. And I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Edward, thanks for calling call anytime quickly to West Palm. Hi, Arlene.

How can I help? Hi, I'm ready to retire in June. And I have dropped money from the company. If I take the drop money lump sum, they're going to tax it 20%.

I'd rather just take the money and roll it over into some type of CD, but they don't do that. So yeah, I just want the money to grow, because I don't understand the stocks well. And I don't want to invest it.

No, I understand that. And what I think you want to do, Arlene, is to keep that in a tax deferred environment, so that you're not taking a distribution from the drop program, you're leaving it in a retirement account. And therefore, you don't have to withhold anything. Now, then the question once you get it there, which it's going to be an IRA, an individual retirement account is, okay, what do I put it in? And what you're probably going to want to do is something like a brokered CD, which are easy, or you could roll it to a bank IRA and have them put it in a CD for you. Again, I think going to bankrate.com and finding someone that has FDIC insurance, so it's protected and it's giving you a decent rate of return. It's a little more challenging because it's an IRA, but you can still put it into CDs. The other option would be something called a fixed annuity. These aren't typically my first choice, but for someone who wants the ability to have guaranteed income, either now or in the future with a very good rate of return, better than even you might get in a CD and a guarantee from the insurance company that you can't lose value, that's where the fixed annuities can shine.

And I'd probably rather than going it alone, reach out to a certified kingdom advisor there in West Palm and tell that person that you're looking for something safe with no downside risk, either a guaranteed fixed annuity or a CD, you'll find a CKA at faithbuy.com. Hope that helps. Big thanks to my team today. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.