Religion facilitates cooperation in health care sharing ministries

Religion has been theorized and empirically shown to improve groups' abilities to initiate and maintain cooperation. In the United States, risk-pooling organizations known as health care sharing ministries bring people who share common faiths and ethical principles together and agree to pay each other's medical bills. Through interviews and a survey, we found that members of health care sharing ministries are more religious than nonmembers, felt a greater sense of community with people who share their form of health care coverage than nonmembers, felt a greater sense of shared fate and interdependence with people who share their form of health care coverage than nonmembers, reported that shared faith was important to the success of their ministries, and reported greater satisfaction with their health care coverage than did nonmembers. These findings provide additional support to the idea that religion provides valuable avenues for the expression of commitment to cooperative endeavors that enhance the ability of religious groups to cooperate compared to nonreligious groups.