Evangelical Faithful Band Together to Pay Each Others' Medical Expenses
By SANDRA G. BOODMAN
The Washington Post

When his wife spent a week in Georgetown University Hospital's intensive care unit last year recovering from life-saving brain surgery, Joe Huff never worried about who would pay her $120,000 hospital bill, even though his family has no health insurance.Huff, a 52-year-old Laytonsville, Md. real estate agent, said he trusted that a bill-sharing cooperative of evangelical Christians he joined 10 years ago -- and to which he faithfully mailed a $346 monthly check -- would come through, just as it had when the youngest of the couple's seven children was hospitalized with spinal meningitis two years ago...

...While Medi-Share has many of the characteristics of insurance -- including annual deductibles, a medical advisory board, the practice of negotiating discounts from hospitals and a requirement that non-emergency treatment be approved -- Reinhold insists it is not insurance and therefore is exempt from state regulation...

Read the full story

Learn more about Mission Medical Insurance Here

Prepare, don’t panic about bird flu
Some questions and answers to help clear up confusion

Q: How is a pandemic different from regular winter flu?

A: A pandemic occurs when a strain of the influenza virus emerges that is very different from the usual flu strains that circulate every winter. Even healthy people won’t have any residual immunity. There were three pandemics in the last century.

Q: Will a pandemic strike this winter?

A: Most experts say it’s not likely, but there’s no way to tell.

Q: Will the bird flu cause the next pandemic?

A: Possibly, but only if it evolves so that it can start spreading easily from person to person. This H5N1 strain has killed at least 62 people in Asia; most were infected by close contact with sick birds or their droppings. This bird flu has not been found in people or birds in the USA.

Learn more about the Bird Flu and learn more about how to protect your health while traveling internationally.