Georgia’s insurance commissioner is warning consumers of the potential financial risks of joining a Health Care Sharing Ministries program as an alternative to regular insurance.
In these organizations, members agree to share one another’s health care costs. Members of an HCSM typically have a particular religious faith in common, and make monthly payments to cover expenses of other members. Read More
Georgia’s uninsured rate rose slightly in 2018, to 13.7 percent, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
That gives Georgia the nation’s third-highest rate of people without health insurance. The state trails only Texas and Oklahoma.
Georgia had the fourth-highest percentage in 2017.
The national uninsured rate also rose in 2018, from 7.9 percent of Americans, or 25.6 million, to 8.5 percent, or 27.5 million, the Census Bureau said.
The Georgia increase is small enough not to be statistically significant, said Bill Custer, a health insurance expert at Georgia State University. But he added, “We’ve lost ground to other states’’ whose uninsured rates have dropped in recent years.
Such negative numbers have prompted the state’s political leadership to seek action. Read More