“With employees facing a 20% health-insurance increase, the Volusia County School Board has pivoted away from its longstanding carrier and awarded a $153 million contract to Curative, a startup that’s been in the business for less than three years.”
Why Volusia schools has faith in Curative, health-insurance startup led by 30-year-old CEO
By Mark Harper – Daytona Beach News Journal
Key Points
- Volusia County Schools switched from Florida Health Care Plans to Curative for employee health insurance.
- Curative’s CEO, Fred Turner, addressed employee concerns and highlighted the company’s preventative care focus.
- The new plan offers no copays, no deductibles, and includes programs like Teladoc, Noom, and Galleri.
With employees facing a 20% health-insurance increase, the Volusia County School Board has pivoted away from its longstanding carrier and awarded a $153 million contract to Curative, a startup that’s been in the business for less than three years.
The May 13 vote ended a decades-long tie to Daytona Beach-based Florida Health Care Plans, which was praised by the school district’s insurance broker, Jessica Scott, senior vice president of Brown & Brown Insurance, as having done a “phenomenal job.”
Scott also said Curative, led by entrepreneur Fred Turner − a 30-year-old United Kingdom native once described described by The Times of London as a “British wunderkind” − has big shoes to fill.
While the switch doesn’t occur until Oct. 1, Curative has begun the process of filling those shoes by making available “care navigators,” staff members who will be assigned to each Volusia schools employee to answer questions and help them find doctors should they have to change. Meanwhile, Volusia human resources employees have also been fielding calls and emails.
“We’re committed to supporting our employees during every step of this transition,” according to a district statement. “While Curative is relatively new in the health insurance space, their innovative model and focus on prevention and accessibility were key factors in the selection process, in addition to the lower cost for our employees.”
Volusia, Curative work to ease ‘discomfort’ of changing insurance carriers
The switch to Curative, a Texas-based company that started less than three years ago, brought unease to many in a district where some 6,300 employees are signed up for the health-insurance plan.
“I think a lot of the discomfort and in some cases, panic − I mean I had one teacher call me in tears − is because a lack of communication between us and them,” School Board member Donna Brosemer said during a May 13 workshop ahead of the vote. “… I wish we didn’t have to vote on this tonight. I actually wish that there was a lag time to allow for those who are most directly affected to get the information they would need to give them comfort with all of this.”
However, all five board members, including Brosemer, voted to approve the change after hearing from members of the Volusia schools insurance committee that undertook a nearly four-month process to evaluate both Florida Health Care and Curative. They were the only two companies that responded to a formal invitation to negotiate.
Stephanie Workman, executive director of human resources, said the process by law requires a “cone of silence” while negotiations were ongoing, and the district informed employees of its intentions as it could. Delaying the vote, she said, would have only given employees, district staff and Curative less time to work through the transition.
Turner, Curative’s CEO, also chimed in.
“There would be a delay on the care navigators, as well,” Turner says. “We’re making the full care navigation team available so the people can get their assigned care navigator immediately and start having those conversations.”
Winning over Volusia teachers’ union
Elizabeth Albert, president of Volusia United Educators and part of the insurance committee that unanimously recommended the change, said during that board meeting that employees had been wading through “misinformation,” but saw signs that both the district and Curative were attempting to help get questions answered.
During the May 13 workshop and board meetings, Turner made himself available to the public and engaged with a VUE member for about 10 minutes.
“I was very impressed because what other CEO would genuinely take the time to explain this in this granular way?” Albert said. “I feel change is very difficult for some people. It creates vulnerabilities. It makes people uneasy and anxious, and right now, at this time in our school year, this is the last thing that we need.”
But Albert said as the information and education becomes more widely available, “this will be a very positive plan for our members in this district who have shared with us time and time again that they needed relief from the rising cost of medical, health care inflation.”
Board members, too, asked about whether the doctors it has contracted in Volusia County are taking patients, how Curative’s plan for Volusia County is covered and whether basic-plan coverage extends nationally and internationally.
“It’s a national plan so you have coverage anywhere in the United States. We do also have international emergency care so if you are traveling internationally, you will also be covered for emergencies,” Turner said.
Who is ‘wunderkind’ Fred Turner?
From age 17, when he built a genetic testing machine in his parents’ basement in West Yorkshire, England, winning the UK Young Engineer of the Year award, Turner has attracted headlines.
Now 30, Turner attended Oxford but dropped out to chase entrepreneurial dreams in the United States. In 2020, he had attempted several startups, including one developing an earlier diagnostic test for sepsis when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the world.
Turner transitioned Curative by developing a COVID test that on April 16, 2020, received emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
On Jan. 4, 2021, the FDA warned the public about the risk of false negative results from the Curative product.
By June 2021, Curative announced a new partnership with Abbott to expand its COVID tests to “the full respiratory panel” allowing for testing of both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. The announcement also led to the discontinuation of Curative’s original tests and Turner wrote the FDA requesting that the emergency-use authorization be revoked as it was no longer needed.
“During the pandemic we delivered over 36 million test results and stand by the quality of every result we delivered,” Turner said in a response to News-Journal questions.
‘No copays. No deductibles. No … really’
As Curative’s COVID testing business grew, Turner became more interested in the U.S. healthcare system.
“As a large-scale healthcare service provider at the time, offering COVID-19 tests and vaccinations, we interacted with thousands of payers and experienced firsthand all of the ways insurance companies would try to avoid paying for needed services,” Turner said. “At the same time we were trying to provide benefits for thousands of our employees and were never satisfied with the options available to us.
“So, in exploring what we would do following the pandemic, we decided to create a company to address many of the serious problems inherent in the legacy health insurance business,” he said.
The Curative approach is heavy on preventative care and sums it up in a slogan, “No copays. No deductibles. No … really.”
Turner calls the U.S. system “quite a contrast” from what he grew up with in the U.K., the National Health System.
“While in England, I learned that, for the most part, people didn’t overutilize medical care even when it’s free,” Turner said. “Yet in America, even for those with insurance, people often defer or avoid necessary healthcare because of the barriers to care put up by insurers, like high deductibles and copays. These ever-escalating out-of-pocket costs make it simply unaffordable for people to get even basic care.”
Simply put, Curative’s model attempts to give members easy access to care they can afford. That way, “they can address health issues early, when they’re simpler and cheaper to treat.”
Plan offers Galleri, early cancer-detection test
During the May 13 board workshop, Turner’s presentation included several programs Curative will offer members at $0, including Teladoc, provider of virtual mental health, Noom for weight management, and Pelago for substance abuse management.
Then he highlighted Galleri, a multi-cancer, early-detection test Curative will make available to its members over age 50 for $0.
“From a single tube of blood, they can detect up to 50 different types of cancer at Stage 1 or Stage 2 that usually you wouldn’t detect with symptoms until Stage 3 or Stage 4,” Turner said. “So things like your pancreatic cancer, your lung cancer … the difficult-to-catch ones where usually they end up being caught too late and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Catching cancer early contains costs as much as tenfold, Turner said.
“I think it shows our commitment to actually trying to drive prevention up front, keep down those long-term costs,” he said.
Workman − Volusia schools’ HR director − said she knows of other school districts looking at switching insurance carriers because of costs, and offered her philosophy on making the change.
“We can either be in the forefront,” she said, “or we can be chasing from behind.”
RELATED BLOG POSTINGS:
Curative Public Sector Webinar
Miami ISD Considers Bolting From TSHBP In Favor of Curative Health
A Common Sense Solution To Public Sector Health Insurance
