The Blue Cross Story

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the largest private well being insurance system 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 provided well being care coverage to more than 88 million people in 2003.

For its beginnings we want 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 after taking the job, he created a health plan that guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents amonth. The program soon spread to other employee groups in Dallas, and then related plans began to crop up nation-wide.

Meanwhile, about the very same time that Kimball was creating his strategy, the Blue Shield concept was becoming popular in the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest. Significant injuries and chronic illness were frequent among these workers who had been in really hazardous and harmful jobs.

Their employers saw the require to supply medical care for them and they arranged with physicians to spend them a monthly fee to take care of the medical wants of the workers. These programs would later grow to be what is known as the Blue Shield Plans.

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

Joseph Binder, a Viennese artist, was hired by Firm secretary E.A. van Steenwyk to generate a poster that included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk utilised the symbol to determine his company's well being plans and then Blue Cross began to use it in other parts of the country.

In 1939, the American Hospital Association, which was based in Chicago, began to use the Blue Cross symbol to indicate that health plans about the country met certain standards.

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

The shield symbol was produced in Buffalo, New York by Carl Metzger in 1939 and the 1st official Blue Shield plan was founded in California that same year. Carl Metzger was an early pioneer in the Blue movement and he wanted a style 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 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 dentist in huntsville al brand symbols also merged and became one of the most familiar symbols in America.

To show you how large it has turn out to be, 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.