The Blue Cross Story by Joe Folger
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the largest
private health insurance system in the United States
(including Puerto Rico) and Canada. It is composed of 55
independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield
Plans that collectively provided health care coverage to
over 88 million people in 2003.
For its beginnings we need to go back to 1929 to a man named
Justin 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 developed a health plan that
guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents a
month. The plan soon spread to other employee groups in
Dallas, and then similar plans began to crop up nation-wide.
Meanwhile, around the same time that Kimball was creating
his plan, the Blue Shield concept was becoming popular in
the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest.
Serious injuries and chronic illness were common among these
workers who were in very hazardous and dangerous jobs.
Their employers saw the need to provide medical care for
them and they arranged with physicians to pay them a monthly
fee to take care of the medical needs of the workers. These
programs would later become what is known as the Blue Shield
Plans.
As for the cross symbol, it was first used 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 create a poster that
included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk used the symbol to
identify his company's health 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 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 until 1972.
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 same year. Carl Metzger was an
early pioneer in the Blue movement and he wanted a design
that would distinguish the new medical service plan.
It soon flourished as the number of Blue Shield Plans kept
on growing. 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.
Over 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 one of the most familiar symbols in America.
To show you how large it has become, 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 designs of Blue Cross-
Blue Shield.
Joe Folger with his extensive insurance experience writes
for http://www.bluecrosstips.com and further information
about the Blue Cross plans can be found there.
About The Author:
Joe Folger with his extensive insurance experience
writes for http://www.bluecrosstips.com and further
information about the Blue Cross plans can be found
there.
