The Blue Cross Story

出典: くみこみックス

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the largest private wellness insurance program in the United States (such as Puerto Rico) and Canada. It is composed of 55 independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans that collectively provided well being care coverage to over 88 million folks in 2003.

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 skilled administrator, as he headed the College of Medicine, School of Nursing, College of Dentistry, and the university hospital.

Soon after taking the job, he developed a well being strategy that guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents amonth. The plan soon spread to other employee groups in Dallas, and then related plans began to crop up nation-wide.

Meanwhile, about the identical time that Kimball was creating his plan, the Blue Shield idea was becoming common in the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest. Severe injuries and chronic illness were typical among these workers who had been in extremely hazardous and unsafe jobs.

Their employers saw the need to provide medical care for them and they arranged with physicians to spend them a monthly fee to take care of the medical needs of the workers. These programs would later turn into what is identified as the Blue Shield Plans.

As for the cross symbol, it was first utilized in a 1934 advertisement for the Hospital Service Association, which later became known as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

Joseph Binder, a Viennese artist, was hired by Company secretary E.A. van Steenwyk to generate a poster that included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk employed the symbol to determine his company's well being plans and then Blue Cross began to use it in other parts of garage door repair in [http://www.nationalautoguardian.com/ drivetrain warranty alvin] the country.

In 1939, the American Hospital Association, www nationalautoguardian com which was based in Chicago, began to use the Blue Cross symbol to indicate that wellness plans about the country met particular standards.

The AHA continued to use the symbol until 1960 when the Blue Cross Association was founded. The two organizations remained affiliated till 1972.

The shield symbol was developed in Buffalo, New York by Carl Metzger in 1939 and the 1st 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 design that would distinguish the new medical service strategy.

It soon flourished as the number of Blue Shield Plans kept on expanding. In 1948 the symbol was informally adopted by nine plans called the Connected Medical Care Strategy, which was later renamed the National Association of Blue Shield Plans.

Over the years, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield healthcare insurance ideas took hold. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association was formed in 1982 by a merger of the Blue Cross Association and the National Association of Blue Shield Plans. When the Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations merged, their brand symbols also merged and became one of the most familiar symbols in America.

To show you how significant it has become, in 2003, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association took in $182.7 billion in income. The evolution of managed well being care in the United States is intimately linked to the designs of Blue Cross-Blue Shield.