1938

Establishment of national Blue Cross program for regional hospital prepayment plans (of which there were 38 Plans with 1.365 million subscribers) that met the 14 standards adopted by AHA in 1937; they 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). The standards required payments to hospitals based on costs; imparted values in tradition of private, voluntary, not-for-profit hospital; and offered same rates to all subscriber groups regardless of age, sex, occupation, or other characteristics (“community rating”), which violated insurance principle of tailoring rates to risk potential of a subscriber group (30-31).