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The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the biggest private health insurance program in the United States (which includes Puerto Rico) and Canada. It is composed of 55 independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans that collectively supplied health care coverage to more than 88 million people in 2003.<br><br>For its beginnings we require to go back to 1929 to a man namedJustin Ford Kimball when he became vice president of Baylor University in Dallas, Texas. He was an experienced administrator, as he headed the College of Medicine, School of Nursing, College of Dentistry, and the university hospital.<br><br>Soon right after taking the job, he created a well being strategy that guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents amonth. The program soon spread to other employee groups in Dallas, and then similar plans began to crop up nation-wide.<br><br>Meanwhile, about the identical time that Kimball was creating his strategy, the Blue Shield notion was becoming popular in the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest. Significant injuries and chronic illness had been prevalent among these workers who had been in extremely hazardous and unsafe jobs.<br><br>Their employers saw the need to give medical care for them and they arranged with physicians to pay them a monthly fee to take care of the medical wants of the workers. These programs would later turn out to be what is recognized as the Blue Shield Plans.<br><br>As for the cross symbol, it was initial utilised in a 1934 advertisement for the Hospital Service Association, which later became recognized as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.<br><br>Joseph Binder, a Viennese artist, was hired by [http://www.larrythemortgageguy.com/home.html larrythemortgageguy.com] Organization secretary E.A. van Steenwyk to create a poster that included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk utilized the symbol to determine his company's wellness plans and then Blue Cross began to use it in other parts of the country.<br><br>In 1939, the American Hospital Association, which was based in Chicago, began to use the Blue Cross symbol to indicate that wellness plans about the country met particular standards.<br><br>The AHA continued to use the symbol till 1960 when the Blue Cross Association was founded. The two organizations remained affiliated till 1972.<br><br>The shield symbol was created in Buffalo, New York by Carl Metzger in 1939 and the first official Blue Shield plan was founded in California that identical year. Carl Metzger was an early pioneer in the Blue movement and he wanted a style that would distinguish the new medical service program.<br><br>It soon flourished as the number of Blue Shield Plans kept on expanding. In 1948 the symbol was informally adopted by nine plans known as the Connected Medical Care Plan, which was later renamed the National Association of Blue Shield Plans.<br><br>More than the years, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield healthcare insurance concepts took hold. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association was formed in 1982 by a merger of [http://sacramentoseoservices.com/ sacramento seo] the Blue Cross Association and the National Association of Blue Shield Plans. When the Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations [http://www.thespallc.com/ thespallc.com] merged, their brand symbols also merged and became a single of the most familiar symbols in America.<br><br>To show you how huge it has turn into, in 2003, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association took in $182.7 billion in income. The evolution of managed health care in the United States is intimately linked to the styles of Blue Cross-Blue Shield.