A Missouri woman’s heart attack cost her $45,000 in medical bills. A Georgia man’s kidney stone treatment carried a $67,000 tab. A California woman was treated for a stroke and got a bill for $125,000.
All were depending on St. Joseph, Missouri-based nonprofit Medical Cost Sharing Inc. to pay the bulk of those costs. They were members, some paying monthly premiums upward of $750 per month, of a so-called healthcare sharing ministry. Such groups are essentially charities in which members united by religious beliefs agree to help each other cover unexpected medical expenses.
But, according to the FBI and attorneys for the Department of Justice, they were all victims of an elaborate fraud scheme that spanned the better part of a decade, reeled in with a sales pitch targeting “like-minded Christians.” And all the while, the authorities allege, the two men who started the nonprofit were motivated by self-enrichment, the Kansas City Star reports.
Since its creation in 2013, Medical Cost Sharing has — by the government’s estimates, based on access to its financial records — collected roughly $7.5 million in membership fees from members around the country. But over that time, an estimated $246,000 — or 3.5% of money collected — actually went toward sharing the cost of health care bills, according to government estimates.
Now federal officials have closed down the organization as they have gathered information they say amounts to evidence of years of widespread fraud. And they have seized assets of the founders, namely their homes, saying the properties were the fruits of a wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Read more.
