COVID Test Provider Curative Pivots to Employer-Plan Market

Curative Inc., the Texas startup that launched as a COVID-19 testing provider and pivoted to selling commercial health insurance last year, bought bankrupt Illinois-based life insurance firm American Country Insurance Company (ACIC) earlier this month for an undisclosed sum. The transaction will allow Curative to sell health plans in Illinois, but health care insiders doubt that the firm’s signature offering — large-group commercial health plans with no deductibles — can viably be delivered by a small startup. 

Curative said on June 15 that it acquired ACIC, which entered bankruptcy in 2020 and has been in receivership in the states where it operates ever since. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Per a Curative press release, the ACIC deal will allow the firm to operate “licenses to sell large-group health insurance in select additional states.” Michael Abrams, principal of Numerof & Associates, tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that one of those states will be Illinois, as ACIC held both life insurance and health insurance licenses in that state.