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Blue Cross
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Blue Cross is a name used by an association of health insurance plans throughout the United States. It was developed in 1929, by Justin Ford Kimball, at Baylor University in Dallas, Texas. The first plan guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for $6 a year. The plan was extended to other employee groups in Dallas, and then nationally. The American Hospital Association (AHA) adopted the Blue Cross symbol in 1939 as the emblem for plans meeting certain standards. In 1960 the AHA commission was superseded by the Blue Cross Association. Affiliation with the AHA was severed in 1972. In 1982, Blue Cross merged with the National Association of Blue Shield Plans to create the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Theoretically, Blue Cross-Blue Shield operations are considered to occur via a series of administratively independent franchises offering insurance plans within defined regions. Blue Cross-Blue Shield offers some form of health insurance coverage in every US state and Canadian province. They also act as administrators of Social Security in many states or regions of the US, and regularly can be found providing group coverage to state government employees, as well as the US Federal government. Thus a strong bond exists between the Blue Cross-Blue Shield entities and health-insurance policy-making bodies at the highest levels of government in the United States. The evolution of managed care in the United States is intimately linked to the designs of Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

Some of their state plans have been merged by Blue Cross-Blue Shield to achieve economies of scale. The largest such merged plan is the 13-state WellPoint. Others include CareFirst in the Mid-Atlantic and The Regence Group in the Pacific Northwest.