Medi-Share has just made a very big announcement.

First, they have added significant discounts on dentist visits, eye exams, lenses, hearing aids, and LASIK. All members have been sent new cards to use for dental, vision, and hearing services. 

The biggest news is that they now offer instant online doctor appointments, and this service is available 24/7 to every member at no cost. Simply go online, login to your account, and a list of doctors comes up. You can select them based on their background, specialty, whether you prefer a man or a woman, or any other criteria.

This is what it looks like when you first log-in to the service: A list of doctors all licensed to practice in the state you're in. They can not only diagnose and help you with symptoms, but even prescribe for you. The prescriptions are sent electronically to your pharmacy as soon as the appointment is over.

When you find a doctor you like, you can learn more about their background and what they specialize in before booking. For example, if I click on Dr. J Douglas Adams I see a page with all of his credentials and available appointment times:

Those appointment times were all same-day, with many doctors available to talk immediately. The doctors appointments are provided directly through MDLive, one of the highest rated online doctor appointment companies known for their exceptional service. 

If you wanted to get an instant doctor's appointment through MDLive, the normal rate they charge people is $49 per visit. For Medi-Share members, these appointments are now completely free.

This is a very big development and we will continue providing information about it in future posts.

I received an email from Steve in Corpus Christi, Texas, in reply to an article I wrote for the conservative site LewRockwell.  In his email, Steve talked a little about his own experiences with MediShare.  I asked him if he could expand what he wrote and turn it into a guest post, and he was kind enough to do that.

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My family and I have been in the Medi Share program since January 2012.  We started when I quit my job to start a small construction business and lost the insurance I had with my job.  Joining and getting setup with the program were real easy.  

I'm 45, my wifes 38, and our kids are 14 11 and 9.  We pay $387 a month, and the cheapest decent option I found for normal insurance would've been about $850 so it was pretty clear to join.

In your review, you say it's basically like normal insurance just with different terms for the deductible etc. I'd definitely agree with that.  The only thing that's real important, and we didn't fully understand at first, is that nothing "routine" is covered.  So what that means is that physicals and normal stuff for the kids aren't reimbursed, which is a downside but we still end up paying a lot less overall.

Other than that, we have no complaints.  There are doctors for everything, and we've never had to go out of the network (you pay extra for that but its never been an issue for us).  Getting your bills submitted is easy since they do that for you and there haven't been any surprises.

The health plan I had through my job was with Cigna.  I had a lot of bad experiences with their customer service, wrong reimbursement amounts etc.  Dealing with MediShare has been a lot easier.  Their customer service is really good and there haven't been any surprises in terms of unexpected expenses or hassles.  

One other thing that's nice is the prayer they have when people are sick and my wife is very involved with that.  Also we've had a few hundred taken off our bill from friends signing up.  

So that's it, we've been real happy with it.

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Thanks for chiming in Steve!