I’m one of the 5,000 lucky Floridians who was able to sign up for JohnnyCare, the fake health care sharing ministry created by John Oliver and the people at Last Week Tonight for this recent episode:
Health care sharing ministries are a uniquely American kind of organization where members — who share common religious or ethical beliefs — contribute to a pool of money that covers their health care costs. It sounds good in theory, but as the video above and this New York Times article show, it’s a little different in practice.
Unsurprisingly, the standards for setting up a health care sharing ministry in Florida aren’t terribly high. This is why John Oliver and Last Week Tonight were able to set use Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, the tax-exempt church that they were able to set up back in 2015, to set up a spin-off church, Our Lady of Perpetual Health, in Florida, which allowed them to create a health care sharing ministry, JohnnyCare, also in Florida.
For a mere US$1.99, I provided another member with the JohnnyCare Instant Care Kit, complete with “not one, not two, but three” band-aids. In return, another member paid the same amount to buy me this one:
It came with this packing slip:
Only 5,000 JohnnyCare kits were made. As required by law, since JohnnyCare is a health care sharing ministry registered in Florida, only residents of Florida — of which I am one — were eligible to get one.
Hopefully, I won’t need those band-aids anytime soon. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with what passes for healthcare here: Neo-feudalist employer-provided health insurance.
From The Hill’s “Changing America” section:
