Zion Health Share Review – Our Experience Over Five Years
Many people are looking for alternatives to traditional health insurance, and if that’s you – you may have stumbled upon the idea of a health share.
If you get on Reddit or talk to a health broker, you may be scared away with horror stories. But we’ve been using a health share in some capacity or another since about 2017, and it’s been the best decision. While there are some sketchy companies out there, I believe many of the issues people have come from not quite understanding how health shares work.
We’ve been with Zion Healthshare for the past five years or so, and while there have been some bumps along the way, it’s largely worked like clockwork. I originally wrote this post in 2023, and since I just delivered our fourth baby while being on Zion, I thought it would be a good time to share our experience.
If you find this helpful, and it’s aided your decision to join Zion, we’d love for you to signup through our referral link. We are actual Zion members and pay for it every month and aren’t connected to them in any other way.
My Experience
Since signing up for Zion, we have submitted many claims, including:
- Hysteroscopy was needed due to abdominal pain and abnormal ultrasound finding
- My son briefly had a few seizures a few years ago, and they paid for multiple hospital stays and follow-up with neurology (including an MRI)
- Miscarriage
- Colonoscopy and other GI issues
- Endometriosis surgery
- Full-term pregnancy which had complications, which resulted in additional monitoring and an eventual c-section
- Skin cancer surgery
- Ear surgery for my son (and a necessary hearing aid)
I feel like I’ve had a variety of experiences that have exposed me to how Zion works – and the good and the bad.
Overall, I am very happy with Zion. Nothing is ever perfect, but I’ve found them to be flexible and helpful throughout the different experiences.
Payment is usually fast, and if there is something that is urgent, they are always flexible with that and do whatever they can to get your payments made.
I know a lot of people are interested in the pregnancy sharing, so I thought I would outline that specifically.
The month after I got pregnant, they switched to the new pregnancy IUAs for people on the top level. While I was grateful that I was stll eligible for the $1000 IUA, I was pretty frustrated that they only increased the IUA for people paying the top amount AND that they act like pregnancy is some abnormal event. Why they feel like it should have a separate IUA than what you pay for is beyond me, and I wish they’d reconsider. But I am grateful that I was able to squeak by with the $1000 IUA (especially since we’ve had fertility issues for several years).
Beyond that, our experience was great. The office I go to here in Denver for pregnancy care is very good about working with health shares and self-pay clients, and as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I was able to make an arrangement for a global fee – which wasn’t due until the end of my pregnancy. This is what Zion requests you do.
After my 20-week anatomy scan, it became necessary for me to have additional monitoring for growth, a kidney issue, as well as because my Crohn’s disease was flaring a lot. I went to an MFM and had additional ultrasounds, as well as NSTs and BPPs toward the end of my pregnancy. Zion requested my medical records but quickly approved the extra care, and I had no issue submitting my bills throughout the rest of my pregnancy.
I was able to submit bills for chiropractic care after 30 weeks to help with back pain. They initially said I needed a doctor’s referral for this, but after I pointed out there was nothing about this in the sharing guidelines, they approved the care.
I had a hospital stay around 37 weeks and at 39 weeks (before my delivery at 39 weeks and 4 days). For the second hospital stay, they needed to submit it to the determination department, which seemed odd to me, and we are still waiting to hear back. But it doesn’t seem like there should be an issue.
I paid the hospital bill ahead of my birth, and the person at the hospital accidentally coded it as a circumcision instead of birth (so weird). Zion wouldn’t accept the proposed payment until I got that corrected, even though it was clearly for birth. But that wasn’t a big deal.
I ended up having a c-section, and Zion paid for the additional payment for my care providers and for the hospital stay.
The main issue I ran into was that I *thought* I’d submitted all of my extra bills I paid for during my pregnancy for extra monitoring, but when I added up the reimbursement, it was over $1000 short. I’m not sure if my bills just didn’t get uploaded or what happened, but I’m trying to resolve that now. I am confident I will be reimbursed.
Overall, it was a great experience being pregnant and using Zion. I do wish that they’d cover lactation care as part of the postpartum care.
You do have to be with Zion for six months before they will cover a pregnancy, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Now I’ll go into more of the good/bad about Zion.
The Good
Fast Payment
It is very fast to get payments processed with Zion. This was a very pleasant change from Christian Healthcare Ministries (with whom we were previously), where it would take 90-120 days.
Depending on the time of year, it may take longer for them to process the bills. But they are usually pretty friendly when you call or email to get additional details.
Easy to Submit Documents
Zion has done a good job of making their online portal easy to navigate and upload documents. That said, there are a few times I am 99.99% sure I submitted a bill that never got uploaded, which is frustrating. This is what I ran into with my pregnancy. I had a lot of bills toward the end, and I suspect things just got a little overloaded in my portal.
Flexible
I find that Zion is willing to work with you and make some exceptions. They specifally say they don’t cover hearing aids, but I submitted a request for additional sharing for them to pay for one for my son, who is a minor. I was so thrilled and honestly surprised when they approved it, which was a huge blessing.
Affordable
All things considered, Zion is very affordable in comparison to traditional insurance. The amount does seem to go up every year, but it’s still much, much less than what we’d pay for regulari nsurance.
DPC Option
We go to a doctor who uses a Direct Primary Care model, which works really well with using a health share. One of the features that drew me toward Zion was that they have a DPC plan. Because we use a DPC, we paya lower fee per month for our family of six. You don’t get all the perks of a traditional membership (such as included vaccinations, mammograms and colonscopies), but it’s worked well for us and saved money in the long run.
Includes alternative care, preventative, etc.
I like that Zion allows for certain alternative care options.
No Specific Faith Requirement
This is definitely the most significant selling point for Zion – they are not associated with any specific faith. We haven’t been allowed to join certain health shares out there because we are Latter-day Saints, and I can’t truthfully agree with their faith statement.
Zion welcomes members of all faiths and have reasonable “principles of membership“. After looking at various health shares for Latter-day Saints, Zion made the most sense (and they are not associated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at all).
The Downsides
Customer Service
Okay, in full disclosure, most of my customer service experiences have been fine. However, about eight months in, I had an absolutely horrible experience with someone over there when I was trying to get my son’s medical bills submitted after he had to be hospitalized during a heat stroke/seizure incident in North Carolina.
It was already a really emotionally charged event, and we had issues with the hospital billing someone else’s insurance (that’s a whole other story!). The woman who I was corresponding with there was very rude and condescending and refused to even get on the phone with me.
I’ll admit that I was not the nicest either, but it was just a very unfortunate event. There was someone else I talked to after this happened, and she was much more understanding and helpful. But even after I sent a full write-up, I never heard anything back.
Since then, we’ve had no issues with customer service, and I have found everyone to be really helpful.
Inconsistent Information/Service
The issues I had with customer support stemmed from getting inconsistent information and service. When I originally signed up, the membership guidelines said that if you were able to negotiate a discount with your healthcare provider, it may be applied toward your IUA for the event. I had confirmed this via email before signing up as well.
When I had a hysteroscopy, I was able to get a discount, and they provided me a discount outward to my IUA, no problem. Well, with my son’s seizure, we got a pretty big discount, but they lady I was talking with said this is absolutely not their policy, and she was very rude and accusatory.
It turns out that they had changed their guidelines and removed any reference of this, which felt shady to me, especially since it was something I had specifically asked about when I signed up. I feel like they should have honored since it was part of the guidelines when I signed up.
IUA
We pay for the $1000 IUA, though it recently was announced that it would be $1250. I think they only increased it for people on this level, which, like the pregnancy increase, didn’t make sense to me. Why they keep increasing things for people who pay the most doesn’t make sense.
If you have three qualifying events that you’ve paid your IUA for, anything else isn’t subject to the IUA, which is nice.
All in all, Zion has turned out to be the best option for our family and our current situation. I am always looking at different options, but we are at the point where they will pay for more pre-existing condition related issues, and it is affordable, so I don’t think we will leave any time soon.
I would love to hear about your experience though! If you have any questions or comments, be sure to share them below! If you have found my post helpful in helping you decide to sign up for Zion, we’d love for you to join through our referral link!
