Contents
The precursor to our modern health insurance system began in the 1920s when hospitals began to offer services on a pre-paid basis. What is widely considered the first employer-sponsored plan started with a group of teachers in Dallas.Mar 18, 2019
The AMA and the Defeat of Government Insurance before 1960
By the 1960s, the system of private health insurance in the United States was well established. In 1958, nearly 75 percent of Americans had some form of private health insurance coverage.
Back in 1940, medical care was relatively basic, he said. … That leaves 15 percent of the population — about 48 million Americans — who lacked health care coverage. Our ruling. Carr said before World War II, very few people had health insurance.
1929
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or ObamaCare into law. The law represented the most significant overhaul and expansion of healthcare coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid back in 1965.
The Blue Cross story began in 1929 when Justin Ford Kimball, an official at Baylor University in Dallas, introduced a plan to guarantee school teachers 21 days of hospital care for $6 a year. Other groups of employees in Dallas soon joined the plan and the idea quickly attracted nationwide attention.
Most hospitals were small, locally oriented institutions in the early 1960s; 3 out of 5 general hospitals had fewer than 100 beds. The traditional American “voluntary” or community hospital was a not-for-profit or- ganization.
Medical care during the nineteenth century had been a curious mixture of science, home remedies, and quackery. Many of the most basic elements of modern medicine, such as sophisticated hospitals, physician education and certification, and extensive medical research did not exist.
During the 1920s, the cost of medical care rose due to growing demand and higher quality standards for physicians and hospitals. Families had more money to spend but less room in their homes to care for sick family members.
Early Growth of Health Insurance: The 1940s and 1950s
Private health insurance grew rapidly during the 1940s and 1950s, but obtaining accurate measures of the extent of coverage is difficult. Exhibit 1.2 shows the percentage of the US population with some sort of health insur- ance coverage from 1940 through 1985.
President Harry S.
Harry Truman, who became President upon FDR’s death in 1945, considered it his duty to perpetuate Roosevelt’s legacy. In 1945, he became the first president to propose national health insurance legislation.
First Health is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aetna, which helps us enhance our national provider network and further improve savings across the country. Aetna is a wholly owned subsidiary of CVS Health.
Enacted by | the 93rd United States Congress |
Effective | December 29, 1973 |
Citations | |
---|---|
Public law | 93-222 |
Statutes at Large | 87 Stat. 914 |
Type | Non-profit health plan (tax exempt status removed in 2014) |
---|---|
Founder | California Medical Association |
Headquarters | 601 12th Street Oakland, California |
Key people | Paul Markovich, President and chief executive |
Revenue | $21.8 billion USD (2020) |
July 30, 1965, Independence, Missouri, United States
Late 18th century. On July 16, 1798, President John Adams signed the first Federal public health law, “An act for the relief of sick and disabled Seamen.” This assessed every seaman at American ports 20 cents a month. This was the first prepaid medical care plan in the United States.
How Health Care Became So Expensive Health care spending in the United States more than tripled between 1990 and 2007. This 3-part series explores the rising costs, and why our care hasn’t necessarily gotten better.
Even when the nation’s first hospital began in Philadelphia in 1751, it was thought of primarily as an asylum or poorhouse; another century or more would pass before the public viewed hospitals as reputable and safe. Before the foundation of modern nursing, nuns and the military often provided nursing-like services.
Blue Cross was founded in 1929 as a way to provide prepaid hospital care. A decade later, Blue Shield was founded to provide reimbursement for physician services. The Blue Cross Association and National Association of Blue Shield Plans merged in 1982 to form the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
Capital Blue Cross is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
The 1950s saw great advances in the detection and cure of illness. Not long afterwards, polio, a disease whose mere mention resulted in shudders among the general population, was dramatically decreased as a threat to public health. … New surgical procedures revolutionized medicine.
More than 70 percent of the population had some form of hospital insurance by 1965 (though less than one-half of the elderly population did), 67 percent had surgical insurance, and there was a growing market for major medical insurance (Health Insurance Institute, 1980).
Advances in Healthcare Since the 1960s
In 1960, average life expectancy was 69.8 years. By 2009, that number had increased by almost a decade to 78.2 years. We are living longer thanks to the advances we’ve made in treating serious illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
The 1960s saw the development of the first artificial heart and the balloon embolectomy catheter that allowed the first minimally invasive surgical procedure. Surgeons attempted the first human liver and heart transplants, procedures that now save thousands of lives each year.
The United States does not have a universal healthcare program, unlike most other developed countries. In 2013, 64% of health spending was paid for by the government, and funded via programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Veterans Health Administration.
Subsequently, multiple proposals were introduced, starting in 1949 with President Harry S Truman who proposed universal health care; the proposal by Lyndon B.
WellPoint Health Networks acquires RightCHOICE, the parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri and HealthLink. WellPoint Health Networks acquires MethodistCare, an HMO in Texas.
First Health is a brand name of First Health Group Corp., an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Aetna Inc. First Health®, one of the largest national PPO networks. Please check with the provider before scheduling your appointment to confirm he or she is participating in First Health’s network.
“The long-awaited HMO Act of 1973 failed to resolve the nation’s health care crisis and nearly derailed the HMO movement…,” writes Coombs. … Federal funding gave prepaid health care a legitimacy long denied by the medical profession, but the federal requirements for HMOs deterred many potential sponsors.”