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The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the largest private health 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 offered well being care coverage to over 88 million people in 2003. For its beginnings we need 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. Soon right after taking the job, he created a wellness plan that guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents amonth. The plan soon spread to other employee groups in Dallas, and then similar plans began to crop up nation-wide. Meanwhile, about the exact same time that Kimball was making his program, the Blue Shield idea was becoming well-known in the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest. Severe injuries and chronic illness had been frequent amongst these workers who were in quite hazardous and hazardous jobs. Their employers saw the need to have to provide medical care for them and they arranged with physicians to pay them a monthly fee to take care of the medical requirements of the workers. These programs would later grow to be what is recognized 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 recognized as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. dui lawyers san francisco Joseph Binder, a Viennese artist, was hired by Organization secretary E.A. van Steenwyk to generate a poster that included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk employed the symbol to identify his company's well being plans and then Blue Cross began to use it in other parts of the country. best franchises In 1939, the American Hospital Association, which was based in Chicago, began to use the Blue Cross symbol to indicate that wellness plans around the country met certain standards. The AHA continued to use the symbol until 1960 when the Blue Cross Association was founded. The two organizations remained affiliated till 1972. dui lawyers san francisco The shield symbol was created in Buffalo, New York by Carl Metzger in 1939 and the 1st official Blue Shield strategy 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. It soon flourished as the number of Blue Shield Plans kept on expanding. In 1948 the symbol was informally adopted by nine plans named the Associated Medical Care Plan, which was later renamed the National Association of Blue Shield Plans. 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 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 1 of the most familiar symbols in America. To show you how significant it has turn out to be, in 2003, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association took in $182.7 billion in revenue. The evolution of managed health care in the United States is intimately linked to the styles of Blue Cross-Blue Shield.