NCAA accepts health care sharing in lieu of insurance

As many of you are aware from your time in college, or if you have children in college, the majority of higher education institutions require students to buy health insurance from the school or prove they have insurance elsewhere. Thankfully, throughout the years hundreds of institutions have accepted health care sharing in lieu of their health insurance requirement. However, if a student was an NCAA athlete, they were required by the NCAA to purchase insurance, even if the school accepted health care sharing. Earlier this year, the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries met with the NCAA on behalf of health care sharing ministries and recently heard back from the Director of Travel and Insurance: After a discussion with our governance and membership affairs staff, we will be accepting coverage through a health sharing ministry to meet NCAA requirements. After our discussion, we feel we have a better sense for how these programs work and are comfortable that the student-athlete is appropriately covered through these programs.

Our membership services staff is updating our databases with this new interpretation and will be contacting the schools that have been affected by our decisions in the past. This decision by NCAA staff avoided a lengthy, and time-consuming effort to get the NCAA bylaws amended. Praise the Lord for this marvelous blessing! As the NCAA states, they will be contacting the schools that have been affected by their decisions in the past. However, schools may be slow to receive the information or may continue to act on their previous understanding of policy. If you or your child encounter any difficulty feel free to contact the Samaritan office and we will assist you.

This development still leaves a significant burden on some Samaritan families. For reasons only God can truly discern, there are a few evangelical colleges who reject health care sharing for their insurance requirement (most accept it), even though we can document to them its acceptability under Obamacare. Even more puzzling, well over 100 government and secular private schools currently accept health care sharing while these faith-based schools reject this faith-based ministry. Among the colleges currently rejecting the SMI ministry are:

Baylor University Waco, TX
East Texas Baptist College Marshall, TX
Liberty University Lynchville, VA
Northland Baptist Bible College Dunbar, WI
Mercer University Macon, GA

Please pray that God would open the eyes and soften the hearts of the administrators at these schools (Proverbs 21:1). Also, if you have any contacts with these schools, that might help us bring our petitions to those brethren in power (Matthew 18:16), please contact the SMI Public Policy Department, so we can work together to appeal to them to change their minds. Again, join us in praising the Lord for this favorable response from the NCAA and the many blessings He continues to pour out on this ministry.

J. Brian Heller is General Counsel for Samaritan Ministries, and Joel Noble is Manager of Public Policy.