Cross posted on the Health board:

I know someone thinking about accepting an offer from a smaller company that has Curative as their health insurance. Does anyone have any experience with this? The benefits show you pay $0 for any service if you participate in their "baseline visit". It seems that most of the providers are in-network through "First Health". All I can find about this company is that it is out of Austin, started a health insurance business in 2022, and was a startup selling Covid testing in 2020.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Our company just switched to a Curative this year. It was by far the best choice here locally, given that St. Joseph's network falls within First Health and while Scott & White did not renew with First Health, Curative negotiated an agreement directly with them to keep all S&W in network.

You have a 120 day grace period to schedule your assessment, which is basically a 30-minute discussion with a doctor about your general health, exercise, concerns, etc. Nothing discussed in the assessment will affect your coverage or your rates. They are trying to help guide people through preventative maintenance before things blow up to large, costly emergencies (or at least that is the business plan). If you decide not to do the assessment, it defaults to a standard HDHP, although I can't fathom why anyone would balk at it.

Only risk in my opinion is if the employees really hammer the policy and run up a ton of claims, your renewal will obviously increase the following year, since current premiums are based on estimated claim amounts due to demographics, etc.

We've had one of our employees get retinal surgery that BCBS balked at, Curative not only approved it immediately, they sent additional equipment to his home for better recovery. I've had an MRI and might have to have shoulder surgery. All of it will be covered at $0.

So far, I have been extremely impressed.

We have it at our firm. Some headaches initially because none of the providers had any experience with the company, but so far so good.

Thanks for the responses. Just curious - do yall work for smaller companies also? The one my friend is looking at is about 80ppl total.

We have around 35 people at our company.

25 or so

Bonfire97 said:

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Cross posted on the Health board:

I know someone thinking about accepting an offer from a smaller company that has Curative as their health insurance. Does anyone have any experience with this? The benefits show you pay $0 for any service if you participate in their "baseline visit". It seems that most of the providers are in-network through "First Health". All I can find about this company is that it is out of Austin, started a health insurance business in 2022, and was a startup selling Covid testing in 2020.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

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For me, it would all depend on whether my providers are in network, and what us the out of network cost.

Is First Health a large established insurance company or a broker? I'm not familiar with them.

The way I understand it is that First Health is a PPO network that has negotiated rates with doctors and hospitals that Curative pays to have access to. It seems like all the doctors I checked accept First Health as well as all the big Houston hospitals (Memorial Hermann, Methodist, etc.).

Bump. Any updated thoughts? This is what we're moving to next year and the pharmacy stuff has me nervous. There are only about 4 in network within 45 minutes of us. With two young kids constantly sick, same day med availability is a concern. As is my daughter's SLP that provides services at her school but does not appear to be in network and my PT I've been with 4 months and now seeing results after ditching the first PT where I did not.