If you're a member of a health sharing ministry — Medi-Share, Samaritan Ministries, Christian Healthcare Ministries, Liberty HealthShare, Sedera, or any other health share — you already know something most Americans don't: you're responsible for finding fair prices on your own.
Unlike traditional insurance, where a network negotiates rates behind the scenes, health share members are essentially self-pay patients. You (or your health share's patient advocacy team) negotiate directly with hospitals. The price you negotiate is the price your community shares.
That puts you in a unique position to benefit from hospital price transparency data — and to save your community real money.
Why Price Transparency Matters More for Health Share Members
When a traditionally insured patient overpays for a procedure, it's their insurance company's problem. When a health share member overpays, it comes directly out of the community's sharing pool — money that could have helped another member with their medical needs.
Consider a real example: the same knee MRI can cost $450 at one hospital and $2,800 at another in the same city. If a member schedules at the $2,800 hospital without comparing prices, the community shares an extra $2,350 that didn't need to be spent.
Multiply that across hundreds or thousands of members making care decisions every month, and the impact on your sharing pool is enormous.
What Data Is Available (and Where It Comes From)
Since 2021, federal law (the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule) requires every hospital in America to publish their actual prices in machine-readable files. This includes:
- Gross charges — The hospital's full list price (the chargemaster rate). Almost nobody should pay this.
- Discounted cash/self-pay prices — The rate offered to patients paying without insurance. This is typically the most relevant price for health share members.
- Negotiated rate ranges — The minimum and maximum rates that insurance companies have negotiated. These give you a useful benchmark for what's "normal" for a given procedure.
- Payer-specific rates — Some hospitals publish the exact rate negotiated with each insurer, giving you detailed market context.
MyCareCost aggregates this data from over 5,000 hospitals across all 50 states and presents it in a searchable, comparable format. You can look up any procedure and instantly see what hospitals near you charge.
How to Use Price Data Before Scheduling Care
Most health shares encourage or require members to shop for the best price before scheduling non-emergency procedures. Here's a practical workflow:
- Get the procedure code — Ask your doctor for the CPT, HCPCS, or DRG code for the procedure they're recommending. This ensures you compare apples to apples.
- Search and compare — Look up that code on MyCareCost and filter by your location. You'll see cash prices, gross charges, and negotiated ranges from every hospital that publishes data in your area.
- Check quality too — Price isn't everything. Look at CMS quality ratings (available on MyCareCost for Premium subscribers) to find hospitals that offer both good prices and strong outcomes.
- Call for the cash/self-pay rate — Contact the hospital's billing department and ask for their self-pay or cash-pay rate. Reference the price you found: "I see your published cash price for CPT [code] is $X — is that still current?"
- Document your shopping — Many health shares want to see that you compared options. Save or print your search results as evidence of price shopping.
Negotiating Hospital Bills as a Health Share Member
Here's something hospitals understand: a self-pay patient who pays promptly is more valuable than an insured patient whose claim takes 90 days to process and might get denied. Use that to your advantage:
- Lead with data — "I've compared published prices from five hospitals in this area. Your cash rate for this procedure is significantly above the market median. I'd like to discuss a fair rate."
- Reference specific competitor prices — Don't be vague. Say: "Hospital A charges $3,200 and Hospital B charges $3,800 for this same procedure. Your rate of $7,500 is more than double the local market."
- Offer prompt payment — Hospitals spend significant money on collections. Offering to pay within 30 days (or even at time of service) gives you leverage for a further discount.
- Ask about prompt-pay discounts — Many hospitals offer an additional 10-20% discount for upfront or same-day payment, on top of the cash rate.
- Get it in writing — Before scheduling, get a written estimate or agreement on the rate. Don't rely on verbal quotes.
Tools That Make Negotiation Easier
MyCareCost offers several features specifically useful for health share members:
- Free price search — Compare cash and self-pay prices across hospitals in any area. No account required.
- Market percentile benchmarks (Premium) — See where a hospital's price falls compared to the 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile in your region. Know instantly if a price is fair or inflated.
- Negotiation call scripts (Ultra) — Word-for-word scripts customized with your local market data, so you know exactly what to say when you call the billing department.
- Price challenge letter templates (Ultra) — Formal letters citing competitor prices that you can send to dispute an inflated bill.
- Negotiation leverage scores (Ultra) — See how strong your position is based on how the hospital's price compares to the market.
- Episode-of-care estimates (Ultra) — See the total expected cost including facility fees, follow-up visits, and commonly forgotten charges — not just the procedure itself.
What to Tell Your Health Share
If your health share doesn't already provide price transparency tools to members, let them know about MyCareCost. Health share networks can partner with us to give all members access to price comparison and negotiation tools — reducing sharing amounts across the entire community.
Every dollar saved on a hospital bill is a dollar that stays in the sharing pool. Price shopping isn't just good for you — it's good stewardship of your community's resources.