How to Find the Best Health Insurance for Pastors and Their Families

For pastors and their families, the responsibility of choosing healthcare benefits can be stressful. You can only make changes to a plan once a year — plus, there are so many companies and plans to choose from. There’s a lot of pressure to get it right.

How do you know when you’ve found the best health insurance? Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. There isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” plan for your church.

The truth is, the best plan is one that blends premium costs with affordable out-of-pocket costs —  so you can access the services you need. This is why there are so many options to choose from.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at where pastors and their families can find a health insurance plan that fits themselves and their church. Plus, we’ll explore why companies offer so many plans. Finally, we’ll take a deeper dive into the 5 plans that Reformed Benefits Association is offering this year.

4 Places to Find the Best Health Insurance for Pastors and Their Families

Because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), options for health insurance are plentiful. This allows churches flexibility when providing health insurance to their staff members. Typically, there are 4 avenues to get health insurance. 

1. Your spouse: Most insurance plans cover an entire family. If your spouse has health insurance through their workplace, you may already be covered. Some employers even pay the full premium. So it's worth looking into to see if that meets your needs.
2. The Marketplace: The ACA Marketplace is where individuals and families can shop for health insurance plans. There are a lot of choices for private insurance. There is even financial assistance available based on income. The Marketplace provides a great way to shop and compare plans. It also allows organizations to reimburse employees for the plans they select. 
3. Individual coverage: Many insurance providers will offer health plans that you can purchase directly from them. These were more common before the ACA created the Marketplace, and tend to be more expensive because the costs are not being spread over a group of people. However, you can likely tailor your coverage to exactly what you want since you’re paying out of pocket for it.
4. Group Plans: This is health coverage provided to a group of people through an employer or an organization. It’s less expensive than individual plans because the risk is shared across a large pool of people. 

With the ACA, more people have access to health insurance than ever before. But with more access, comes more choice. Choice is good, but it has the side effect of creating a very confusing landscape of plans, options, costs, and benefits.

Why are there so many plan options?

By law, insurance plans have to offer 10 essential benefits. But if they all have to offer the same 10 things, why do so many companies have multiple plan options? 

Insurance companies must compete in an open market. That means they have to offer the right mix of affordability and benefits. For pastors and their families, this is the most important consideration in finding the best insurance.

To get you in the right direction, let's take a look at the plans Reformed Benefits Association is offering in 2025.

A Look at Reformed Benefits Association 2025 Health Insurance Plans

At Reformed Benefits Association, we offer five group insurance plans to churches and their employees. Four are from UMR and one is from Surest. 

All of them include prescription coverage at no additional premium. And you always have the option to add on vision, dental, and other supplemental insurance as well. If you would like to learn more about the types of services you can add on, download our benefits guide. 

Here’s a quick dive into the other benefits you can expect from these plans.  

The UMR Health Plans

UMR has a 70-year history and has grown into one of the nation’s largest insurance providers. Because of their size, we are able to negotiate better fees for medical services, which can then be passed along to you.

This year we are offering four plans under UMR. They all cover the same medical services, so the differences lie in the fee structure for each one.

• Premium Plan
  
  • This plan has the highest premiums, but deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and fees for service are lower than other plans. It is also Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) eligible. With this plan, you’ll automatically receive $350 in an account that will pay for your first $350 in medical costs. 
    
    With fixed fees for some of the most used services, you will always know how much it will cost you to see a doctor, a specialist, or the ER.
    
• Consumer Plan

  • With lower premiums, this plan has similar deductibles and out-of-pocket costs to the premium plan. However, the consumer plan requires you to pay a percentage of the costs of common medical services instead of having a fixed fee.  

    You can also create a Health Savings Account (HSA). This works like a bank account for health services. The funds you contribute to it are pre-tax, which saves you money as well.

• $4,000 and $8,000 HDHP plans
  • The final two plans are High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP). These both carry deductible caps which are higher than traditional insurance plans, but come with lower premiums.  
    
    Our experience has shown that on an average year, most participants don’t meet their out-of-pocket maximums regardless of the plan they are on. Because of this, Many prefer to pay a smaller premium and focus on deductible amounts to determine how much their medical expenses may be in the following year. 

Learn more about the UMR Health Plans here.

The Surest Health Plan 

Surest was formed in 2016 as a way to take the guesswork out of medical costs. The founders believed people should be able to shop for insurance like they do other products, such as cars or computers, where they know how much something will cost.

With RBA’s Surest Health Plan, there is no deductible. However, there is a fee schedule for the services that are covered. Sometimes it’s a set price, other times it’s a range. Where you see a range, it means that you can shop around and find the lowest-cost provider in your area. 

The Surest plan also uses the same network as the UMR plans. This is a nationwide network of medical service providers and facilities. In order for your Surest plan to provide coverage you have to use one of them. 

Premiums for this plan tend to be on the lower side. However, that may be offset if your fixed costs are more than co-pays for other plans. 

Learn more about the Surest Health Plan here. 

Work with an Organization Who Understands Your Calling

Now you can see why it's impossible to say, “That’s the best health insurance for pastors and their families.”

Overall, the choice is not about quality — they are all excellent and comprehensive plans backed by nationally recognized insurers. They all have a large group of in-network providers to keep your costs down. 

Instead, your choice is about which one makes the most financial sense for you. At Reformed Benefits Association, we work exclusively with faith-based organizations. Our mission is to help you find the right insurance, one that stewards the resources of the church and your family while providing the protection you need. 

If you would like to see more details about the plans, download our 2025 Benefits guide. 

The information contained in this blog is for educational purposes only. Please seek professional advice before acting on the information you have read above.