These sorts of Christian healthcare networks have been popular off and on since I was a little kid growing up in Evangelical Christian circles. The people who administer them leverage Christian exceptionalism and fear of government bureaucracy to sell their products as better than insurance.

They always say it’s not insurance. They call it Christian love and charity. They claim networks of Christians working together to share expenses result in medical care that’s cheaper, more effective, and more loving.

But is that true? It can’t be. Networks of people working together to share healthcare expenses is the definition of health insurance. If health insurance conglomerates working together could provide better care at lower costs, they’d already be doing it.

Nothing about Christian healthcare cost-sharing networks gives them any advantage. They have no power to lower healthcare expenses because they have no leverage with healthcare networks. Just like none of us do.

Healthcare costs are soaring out of control in the United States because our system is broken, because there are no constraints on what hospitals and doctors can charge, and because the insurance industry generally is incentivized to profit from that dysfunction.

Even Christian healthcare cost-sharing networks that were not scams would not be able to do anything about the soaring cost of medical care. Honest, smart people know that. That’s probably why whichever of these networks are still hanging around pretty much have to be scams.