--- title: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care [VERTICAL] | TIME description: Deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system has led people to pursue alternatives like CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people. canonical: https://time.com/video/8C6Vlpyt/ og:title: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care [VERTICAL] og:description: Deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system has led people to pursue alternatives like CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people. og:url: https://time.com/video/8C6Vlpyt/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8C6Vlpyt/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care [VERTICAL] twitter:description: Deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system has led people to pursue alternatives like CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8C6Vlpyt/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * Health # They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care \[VERTICAL\] > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care VERTICAL [Watch (HLS stream): They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care VERTICAL](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8C6Vlpyt.m3u8) (3:00)  _Published 2025-03-21. Deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system has led people to pursue alternatives like CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people._ --- Mar 21, 2025 5:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Republican Health Care Bill Would Lead to 23 Million Fewer Americans With Insurance](/video/jEVh4WPC/) ### Republican Health Care Bill Would Lead to 23 Million Fewer Americans With Insurance [Republican Lawmaker: Buy Health Insurance Instead of a New iPhone](/video/dsBncGj5/) ### Republican Lawmaker: Buy Health Insurance Instead of a New iPhone [Forgiving Other People Is Good for Your Health](/video/xS4ZKZNa/) ### Forgiving Other People Is Good for Your Health --- ## Transcript I found this ad in a magazine about crowd health, which is health sharing, and it kind of sounded like a scam to me. I thought, what is health sharing and why are people doing it? What it is, is basically people pledge to pay for one another's medical expenses. So just say you have to get your gallbladder removed. You'll tell the company, and then they'll send out a request to all their members asking to help pay for it. And I talked to a lot of people who are on it. And surprisingly, I didn't find very many people who are unhappy with it. A lot of people are really happy with it, especially because they were just so sick of dealing with their health insurance companies, and they were just paying a ton of money for health insurance and getting claims denied and just feeling like health insurance was a scam. I think a lot of people find this appealing, because the money goes directly from one human being to another human being to help them pay for health care needs. It's not going to some big insurance company and being invested somewhere and then going back to CEOs for profit. It really is a fairly straightforward way of a lot of people pooling their money together to using it to pay for health care. It's kind of, you know, what the original idea of insurance was, that a lot of people put their money in to make sure if something bad happens to them, they'll be all set. On the other end, I think insurance has just gotten so complicated and so difficult to use over the years that this is almost stripping it all back and looking for a different way to to handle health care claims. There are definitely some big negatives. One, they're not required to cover anything. So unlike traditional insurance, where if they deny your coverage, you could go to your health commissioner, or you can appeal or do a lot of different things. Um, they can basically do whatever they want. They're not regulated. Two, they don't cover a lot of pre-existing conditions for a while. So if you got pregnant and then signed up, they would not cover your pregnancy for about nine months, which at which point is probably too late. And one other thing that's negative about it is that you have to do a lot of legwork, so you have to call your doctor's office and say, I'm paying cash. What's the cash price? A lot of places might not want to give you the cash price, might not have the cash price. You have to pay up front, which is probably not possible for a lot of people. And then you have to submit your receipts to crowd health and wait for them to pay you back. So, you know, it's not that different from an insurance company, but you have to do a lot of the work that the insurance company would be doing otherwise. I don't see some widespread abandoning of health insurance for health sharing. I think it's too risky for a lot of people. And the idea that you could be stuck with bills that they won't pay is really scary. But I do think it's interesting that so many people are so fed up with health insurance that they're willing to take that risk, and I think we are going to see more alternatives emerging of people saying, there's got to be another way to do this and testing things out. It's a way of looking at something that's different from what we have now and seeking an alternative, and people seem to be into it. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"They Hated Health Insurance. 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