EP 46: Gospel-Centered Healthcare? Yes, Please!
While on the hunt for health insurance a few years ago, Elle discovered Christian Healthcare Ministries, a budget-friendly and Gospel-centered approach to healthcare. Joining the CHM family has been a serious game-changer for Elle and her family. Tune in to her conversation with Lauren Gajdek, the Vice President of Media and Communications for Christian Healthcare Ministries, to hear how it can be a game-changer for you and your family, too!
Welcome
Hey, Sister! Welcome to another episode of the Daughter of Delight podcast. I’m so excited to tell you about today’s episode. I had the pleasure of getting to speak with my friend, Lauren Gajdek, the Vice President of Media and Communications for Christian Healthcare Ministries.If you are unfamiliar with Christian Healthcare Ministries, or if you have heard about it before and are interested in learning more, this conversation is for you!
Review of the Month Winner
Before we dive in, I’ve got to share the month of review winner with you for the month of February. Can I get a drumroll, please? CONGRATS, alexaxo01, you just won yourself a Daughter of Delight dad hat and an Amazon gift card- all for leaving an iTunes podcast rating and review! Please email me at hello@daughterofdelight.com to claim your goodies! For those of you who are unfamiliar with this monthly giveaway, each month I choose someone who leaves an iTunes rating and review to bless with some of my favorite things. It’s a special way for me to say thank you for taking the time to let me know how much you are enjoying the show! Since I am taking a podcast break after next week’s episode, we will resume our monthly giveaway in April.
The Blessing of CHM
Anyway, my husband, Michael, and I have been part of the Christian Healthcare Ministries family for nearly two years and being part of this ministry family has already blessed the both of us tremendously. You will hear a little more about this in my conversation with Lauren, but to give you a glimpse CHM stepped in and lifted the financial burden out of our hands when Michael was in the hospital with strep throat, the flu and pneumonia -- yep, all at the same time -- and also when I was going through an autoimmune scare as well. We had no idea when we joined the CHM family that we would be in need with health-related issues so soon, but they stepped in immediately and were with us every step of the way. If you want to hear more about our personal testimony, be sure to check out episode 28 of the podcast!
What to Expect
In my conversation with Lauren, I ask her questions Michael and I had when we were considering becoming a part of the CHM family. I also ask her questions that you submitted! I’m so excited Lauren took the time to be a wealth of information for us all and can’t wait for you to give it a listen! Since it’s a lot of great information, the CHM team and I partnered together to create a beautiful download that gives you a great overview of CHM and has an awesome FAQ section as well. We had so much fun putting this together and are so excited to offer it to you today, so be sure to download it via the link in today’s show notes!Now, just a heads up, my microphone decided to get a little sassy during this conversation. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I sound a little off compared to usual. You can still understand me and the quality of Lauren’s microphone sounds great, but I wanted you to know why it sounds weird! Ugh. Technology, am I right?! Thanks for bearing with me!Anyway, without further ado, here is my conversation with Lauren. Enjoy, sister!
An Interview with CHM's VP of Media & Communications, Lauren Gajdek
Elle: Hi, Lauren! Thank you so much for making time for this conversation! You know I am a big fan of Christian Healthcare Ministries, so I am really excited to have you on the podcast! Lauren: Thank you so much for having me on! I’m excited to be talking with you. Elle: Absolutely! I honestly can’t wait to share your wisdom with our sisters who are listening to this because I know there are sooo many people who don’t know about CHM that would be so blessed by knowing about it! But before we dive in, I would love for you to introduce yourself. Lauren: Sure! Well, I have actually worked at CHM now for over 17 years- so it is a very big part of my life. Another big part of my life is, of course, my family. My husband, Peter and I have two beautiful daughters, six and four. And we live here in Northeast Ohio where it’s really, really cold right now.Elle: Have y’all had any snow lately?Lauren: Oh yeah, we have a pretty solid coating of snow here on the ground for the last 10 days or so now.Elle: Oh my goodness, I’m so jealous! Tennessee got a little sheet of snow on the ground the other day. It was certainly not much, but the fact that the grass was covered in white for a few hours made me so happy. Lauren: It actually is pretty! I do prefer it to not having any snow, but I prefer summer to all the other options. Elle: Well, I totally understand that! Haha. Let’s go ahead and dive into all the questions I’ve got for you!
Could you give a brief overview of what Christian Healthcare Ministries is? What is it and how does it work?
Sure, I’d love to. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a cost sharing ministry for medical expenses. It is not an insurance company (we are a non profit ministry), but the end result is the same. If you choose to join CHM, the end result is getting your medical bills taken care of. Now, the journey to there is a little bit different, which is what I hope to share with your listeners, but it is essentially a faith-based way of navigating your healthcare costs. We have been around now for 40 years!
For someone who has never heard of cost-sharing before, could you explain the difference between this and health insurance and also speak to some of the benefits of it to compare?
I would say the main thing you need to understand about cost sharing if it is something you are interested in exploring is this:You, the patient, are in control. You are in the driver’s seat. Meaning, instead of a third-party taking care of getting the medical bills from the provider, you tell your doctor you are a self-pay patient and that you have CHM, but that they need to bill you directly. This way, you always know how much your healthcare is costing you. Once you get the bills, you send them in to CHM. We work on them on the backend to help get you discounts and that kind of thing, but we send the money for sharing back over to you so you pay your healthcare provider directly. So, you are a little bit more intimately involved in the process of getting your medical bills taken care of.
Could you explain how this works financially? How much of an investment can people expect to make?
I would be happy to! We have several different programs, but we do highlight our Gold Program because it is the best one. In fact, it’s the only program we offer that has the maternity program associated with it for no extra cost. On our Gold program, if you have a family of 3 or more it is $516 per month. If it’s just one person, it’s $172 per month. The really cool thing about any of our programs is that no family ever pays for more than three units. A unit would be like mom and/or dad, and any number of children who are part of that family are considered one unit. So, there is a three unit cap. Besides the Gold Program, we also have the Silver and Bronze Program. They are very budget-friendly, but they are essentially more hospitalization and surgery, AKA catastrophic in nature. Our lowest cost program, the Bronze program, is $78 per person. So, you are looking at a range of different cost options here, but basically a minimum of $78 and a maximum of $516.
Could you elaborate more on the maternity program?
One of the great things about CHM, whether it is maternity or something else, is that you and your doctor get to decide how you are going to handle things. If I can just give a personal example of my two daughters, I want to just highlight, you know, for maternity, there are so many different decisions that you as a mom--especially a first time mom--feel like you have to make. The birth of my two daughters were very different, both financially and emotionally. I did have both of them with CHM. With my first daughter, I was in the hospital, I had an epidural, I had all kinds of painkillers, and there were some complications with her being born. On the financial side, I think it ended up being somewhere around $11,000 or $12,000 out the door for her birth and everything. With my second daughter--you know, you get wise to these things the second time around---I actually ended up going with a different hospital because with CHM you can choose. I went with a different doctor, a different hospital, and it was a midwife birth. It was completely drug free and it was amazing! This ended up costing me only about $5,000, about a 50% price difference between my two daughters. Now, I don’t tell them that because I don't want to rub it in like, “Hey, you are the more expensive baby than this one over here!” But I do share it here because I like for people to know they are in the driver’s seat as the patient, even with maternity! You choose your doctor, you choose your hospital, and together, you and your doctor determine the decisions that are best for you and your baby.
Today's Episode Brought to You By CHM
Today’s episode is brought to you by the beautiful and jam-packed freebie the Christian Healthcare Ministries team and I put together just for you. This information guide beautifully walks you through an overview of how CHM works to meet your health care needs. If you are looking for a gospel-centered alternative to healthcare, Christian Healthcare Ministries is for you! To snag a copy of this beautiful guide, check out the link in today’s show notes. And trust me when I say you will be so glad you did! Alright, let’s get back to my conversation with Lauren now, shall we?
If someone asked you whether or not CHM was for them, how would you respond?
I would say CHM is a ministry first and foremost. If we are not acting like a ministry, we have no reason to exist. And that’s what I tell people...this is faith-based and it;s for you if you want to take a step in your faith and see how the body of Christ can rally around you in your time of need. Of course we hope you remain healthy and all that good stuff, but even the most healthy among us usually have things like broken bones, or the flu. These things are pretty common. But I want people first and foremost to know that this is a ministry! If you are a Christian, you can join, and there are no qualifications that will prevent you from joining.I would also say if you are looking for something that is super flexible--if you are looking for a career change or if you plan on starting a new business--CHM is great because it can travel with you wherever you go! You don’t have to worry about signing up for a new policy, or even renewing. With CHM, you are a member as long as you want to be one.
You talk about CHRISTIAN HEALTHCARE MINISTRIES as a family…Tell us more about the CHM community? What makes the CHM body of members different from other options that people may have?
That’s a great question. You know, I like to think of CHM as an extension of the body of Christ; an extension of your local faith community. CHM is like a family reunion in a way. I know that sounds kind of silly, but I have heard story after story of members connecting with each other through our Prayers Unceasing Program who have stayed in contact with each other.I think in this day and age, people are really looking for ways to connect. People feel isolated and alone. With CHM, there is this really wonderful family component to it that reminds people they never have to feel alone. There is always someone who is willing to come alongside and pray for you. It’s just wonderful.
Is there anything else you would like to share before we wrap our conversation up today?
This is a little bit of a paradigm shift for people. I can attest to working here for almost 18 years in that we are sharing 100s of millions of dollars in our medical bills every year. God really does have His hand on this ministry, and I hope people are really encouraged knowing that we have been around a long time and that we have been sharing 100% of all the eligible medical bills. We do have guidelines we have to abide by, but as long as your bills are eligible according to our guidelines, we do share 100% of them.
Thank you so much for your time and wisdom, Lauren. I’m so thankful we had the chance to have this conversation! Before I let you go, I want to ask you a question I have decided to ask anyone I interview, and that is, what are you delighting in during this season of your life?
Awesome question! I think I would honestly say the Word of God. It has been so real to me throughout the pandemic and everything that has happened in the last year or so. I think of 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (ESV).
Thanks For Tuning In!
Thank you so much for tuning in to my conversation with our lovely sister, Lauren, from Christian Healthcare Ministries. If you made it this far, chances are you caught on to just how special being a part of this ministry family truly is. I’m so glad I discovered something like CHM exists and I’m so grateful to be a voice for them! If you want to learn more about CHM, you can find the amazing information guide the CHM team and I put together that covers my personal testimony, a general overview of how it all works, what we talked about today on the podcast, and some additional FAQs as well right here. It’s jam-packed with some really great information, so be sure to check it out! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the CHM team and ask. Everyone is so kind and helpful, so trust me when I say you will be very well taken care of! Alright, sister, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I can’t wait to be back with you next Wednesday, but for now let me leave you with the charge of Galatians 6:2, which says:"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (ESV).Be blessed and I will talk with you again soon!