1929

Prototype of Blue Cross plan devised and implemented in Dallas by Justin Ford Kimball at Baylor’s University Hospital. Dallas public school teachers enlisted and coverage began December 20, with 21 days of hospital coverage provided for $6 a year. Within five years the “Cross” plan included 408 employee groups with 23,000 members (Cunningham & Cunningham, 3-7). The Dallas model was a not-for-profit arrangement that guaranteed a service rather than the dollar indemnity paid by insurance companies (10). First joint hospital prepayment was in Sacramento in June, 1932. First multihospital plan in what would become the Blue Cross system was organized by Frank Van Dyk in Newark and Essex County. The “Newark Plan” began in 1933 and offered up to 21 days of semiprivate hospitalization for $10 a year (11-12). In 1934, AHA and American College of Surgeons gave formal approval to group hospitalization (19). In 1936, AHA created a Committee on Hospital Service, headed by Rufus Rorem, to study hospital insurance: “This group was the embryo from which a formidable national organization of Blue Cross Plans would eventually develop” (27). Rorem called first national meeting of Plan executives in Feb, 1937, and in 1938 plans that met the 14 standards adopted by AHA in 1937 qualified as approved Plans that could display “a symbol of affiliation in the form of a blue-colored cross with the AHA seal at its center” (28-30). Percentage of Americans with hospital coverage went from less than 10% in 1940 to nearly 70%in 1955 (90).