Health Sharing Cost Index — 2026

A $67/mo floor and a $617/mo ceiling for the same category of product is strange until you understand what's actually varying. It's not just brand — it's three things that move in opposite directions.

Your IUA is the biggest single lever. The IUA (Initial Unshared Amount) is the amount you pay before the plan starts covering your bills. Solidarity's $67/mo floor requires a $3,000 IUA — meaning you eat the first $3,000 of any medical incident. CHM's $115/mo floor requires only a $300 IUA. The monthly savings look appealing until you run the math on a real hospitalization. Most households doing honest scenario modeling land on a mid-range IUA, which moves the effective monthly cost toward the median.

Faith requirements correlate with lower cost. The strictest Christian ministries (CHM, Samaritan) set floors around $115–$199/mo. They can do this partly because of their membership size — CHM has over 300,000 members — and partly because of lifestyle underwriting: members who don't smoke, drink heavily, or use drugs typically generate fewer large claims. Secular plans (Zion, Knew Health, CrowdHealth) run slightly higher on a price-per-month basis but skip the faith screening, the annual church letter, and the lifestyle accountability.

Coverage cap is a hidden pricing variable. 6 of 15 plans have unlimited coverage per incident. The other 9 have caps ranging from $50,000 per year to $2,000,000 lifetime, depending on the plan. Liberty HealthShare's $50,000 annual cap is a meaningful ceiling — one serious hospitalization can exceed it. The plans with the lowest monthly floors often have lower caps, a higher IUA, or both.

10 of the 15 plans require some form of faith affiliation — Christian (strict or light), Catholic, or Jewish. 5 are open to anyone. The practical difference is bigger than it sounds.

Strict-faith plans (CHM, Samaritan Ministries) require you to be a practicing Christian — CHM asks for a pastor's signature, Samaritan sends a monthly newsletter with prayer requests. They also have lifestyle requirements: no tobacco, no illegal drugs, alcohol in moderation. In exchange, they have the largest member pools (CHM: 300,000+, Samaritan: 250,000+) and some of the lowest monthly floors.

Light-faith plans (Medi-Share, Altrua, others) ask you to affirm a general Christian statement without a pastor's letter. These attract a broader audience but still screen out non-Christians.

Secular plans (Zion, Knew Health, CrowdHealth, HSA Secure, Sedera) have no faith requirement at all. They're growing quickly — Zion is at 75,000+ members since launching in 2019 — partly because they serve the large share of households that want the cost savings of health sharing without the religious affiliation requirement.

One honest caveat: secular plans are younger. CrowdHealth launched in 2021, Zion in 2019. CHM has been operating since 1981. The track record for paying seven-figure claims simply doesn't exist yet at the same scale.

Monthly cost is the wrong primary filter for health sharing. The plan with the lowest monthly cost is often the worst value once you account for everything else. A few things that matter as much as the number:

What happens when you actually use it. All 15 plans look cheap on a clear month. The question is what you pay when you have an ER visit, a surgery, or a chronic condition flare. The IUA is part of that answer, but so is the co-share percentage, whether your provider is in-network (or whether there even is a network), and how fast the plan processes claims. Some plans' processing times run 30-45 days; others run longer.

Pre-existing conditions. Every plan in this index has a waiting period for pre-existing conditions — ranging from 12 months (CHM) to 5 years (Altrua). If you're managing an ongoing condition, the “cheap” plan with a 36-month exclusion can cost you far more than the more expensive plan that starts sharing after 12 months. Check the pre-existing column above carefully.

Coverage limits. 9 of the 15 plans cap coverage — the lowest is $50,000/year (Liberty). One serious hospitalization can run $100,000–$500,000. If a plan's cap is below your worst-case scenario, you're not actually covered for it.

None of this is a reason to avoid health sharing. It's a reason to match the plan to your actual health picture rather than sorting by monthly cost ascending. The advisor below does exactly that.

“Processing time” below is each plan's own published commitment for how long it takes to process an eligible bill after all paperwork is submitted — not a guess and not a member-forum average. Where a plan hasn't published a fixed turnaround, or where its model doesn't work on a processing-time basis at all (CrowdHealth), we say so instead of estimating.