Josh Kushner’s Oscar Health Files for U.S. IPO

(Bloomberg) -- Oscar Health Inc., the health insurance startup co-founded by Josh Kushner, has filed for an initial public offering.

The New York-based company in a filing Friday listed the size of the offering as $100 million, a placeholder that will change.

Founded in 2012, Oscar earlier focused on selling insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The company now has 529,000 members and serves 291 counties in 18 states, according to the filing.

The company was named after Kushner's great-grandfather, an immigrant given the name Oscar at Ellis Island, according to a letter in the filing from Kushner and co-founder Mario Schlosser.

“When it came time to start our business, we wanted to let our members know that we were not a faceless health insurer whose logo lives on a card in their wallets,” they said. “We wanted to communicate that we could help them navigate the health-care landscape like a doctor in the family would. So we chose a real name.”

It said it's the first health-insurance company to offer 24-hour-a-day telemedicine services for no extra fees.

The company lost $407 million on revenue of $1.67 billion in 2020, according to the filing. That compared with a loss of $261 million on revenue of $1.04 billion a year earlier.

Oscar had a valuation of $3.2 billion in a 2018 funding round, Bloomberg News previously reported. The company's plans follow the public markets success of Lemonade Inc., another New York-based, venture-backed insurer.

Kushner, managing director of the venture firm Thrive Capital, is the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and onetime senior adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co. are leading the listing.

Oscar plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol OSCR.

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