The six questions you should ask before buying any program like this. Including ours.

A page called Why Us is usually a list of adjectives. This one is an interrogation instead — the questions a skeptical person actually asks, answered straight, each with a line on how to verify the answer without taking our word for it.

Question 01

Is this insurance?

No, and the distinction matters more than it might sound. Insurance pays a claim after the fact; this reduces the price before you pay it. There is no risk pool here, nothing is indemnified, and no benefit is paid out to anyone.

It also does not meet minimum creditable coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act or Massachusetts law, which is stated on every page of this site rather than in a footnote at the end.

Check itRead the Customer Disclosure page — it is linked from the foot of every page and states this plainly. If a program of this kind is vague about it, treat the vagueness as the answer.

Question 02

Then why is it so much cheaper than cover?

Because it is not carrying any risk. An insurer prices in the possibility of paying out a very large claim on your behalf; a discount program never pays out anything. What you are buying is access to rates that were negotiated with providers in bulk.

That is genuinely cheaper to provide, which is why $19.95 a month is a real price rather than an introductory one. It is also strictly less than insurance does for you, which is the trade.

Check itAsk any program what happens if you have a $40,000 hospital event. The honest answer here is: nothing. That is what insurance is for.

Question 03

What is the catch?

Two, and both are real. The first is that you have to use it — the membership is a fixed monthly cost and the savings only exist when you actually buy something. Someone with no ongoing health spending will lose money on this.

The second is that discounts apply at participating providers. The networks are large — 262,000 dental locations, 60,000 pharmacies, 20,000 vision providers — but they are not universal, and your particular practice may not be in one.

Check itSearch for your own dentist, pharmacy and optician in the provider search before you join, not after.

Question 04

Are the discounts as big as they look?

They are ranges, and the range is wide because providers differ. Dental runs 15% to 50%, prescriptions 10% to 85%, lab work 10% to 80%. Where your particular procedure lands inside that depends on the provider and the service.

We print ranges rather than a single headline percentage precisely because one number would be misleading in most cases. The largest figure on this site — 85% — belongs to prescriptions, and we say so rather than letting it float free as a general claim.

Check itAsk the provider for the member rate and the list rate before treatment. The difference is checkable in advance, every time.

Question 05

What happens if I want out?

You stop. There is no contract, no minimum term, no cancellation fee and no exit process designed to wear you down.

If you paid annually, you have already committed that year — which is the actual trade you made in exchange for the lower rate, and worth weighing before choosing that cycle.

Check itNo contract on any plan or billing cycle. If you are ever told otherwise, it is wrong.

Question 06

Why you rather than anyone else?

Honestly, on breadth and on how plainly it is described. Seventeen categories is wider than most programs of this kind, the tiers are published with their prices and their contents rather than quoted on request, and the limitations are on the pages instead of behind them.

What we will not tell you is that we are the only ones doing this or that nobody else negotiates rates. Plenty do. The argument here is that you can see exactly what you are buying before you buy it.

Check itCompare this page against two competitors. Count how many of them tell you where their program does not work.

02 — What we will not claim

Four sentences you will not find on this site

Because they are the four that discount programs most often reach for.

“A replacement for your insurance.”It is not, it cannot be, and anyone selling it that way is misleading you.

“Save 85% on healthcare.”85% is the top of the prescription range. Presenting it as a general figure would be a lie by arrangement.

“Everybody saves money.”Some people will not. We put that case on the Personal page rather than leaving it out.

“Available nationwide.”Not in Utah, Iowa or Washington, and the lab benefit is out in four more states.

03 — Where that leaves you

A program you can check before you buy it

Which is a lower bar than it should be, and unusually rare in this market.

Everything that decides whether this is worth holding is published: the four plans with their prices across all three billing cycles, exactly which of the seventeen categories sit in each one, the discount range on every category, the states where it does not apply, and the situation in which you should not buy it at all.

None of that requires a phone call to find out. The conversation is for working out which plan fits your spending — not for extracting the facts you needed in order to decide.

See whether the numbers work for you

A few questions about what you actually spend on. Nothing to fill in, and a straight answer either way.