The first health insurance Health insurance that looks like what we think of today began in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Before that, it wasn't so much “health insurance” to pay for the costs of medical treatment, but it was what we would call disability income insurance today. Costs and coverage, student health In the simplest terms, insurance is protection against a risk in exchange for some form of payment. If you think about it, the concept of insurance has existed for thousands of years.
However, only (somewhat) recently have large insurance companies come into play. A major disadvantage of the teacher's plan was that it only covered hospital services. This is where Blue Shield comes into play. In the 1930s, a group of employers from the logging and mining industries came together to provide medical services to their employees.
This plan became the National Association of Blue Shield Plans. As you can guess, many Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies merged and became the Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance companies we know today. Over the years, as healthcare costs increased and more employers saw the need to provide greater benefits to their employers, the health insurance industry boomed. UnitedHealthcare was created in the 1970s and is currently the largest provider of health insurance in the U.S.
UU. Aetna's forerunner began as a life insurance company, specializing in fire insurance, in the 1850s. Through multiple acquisitions, including the purchase of Prudential HealthCare, Aetna became one of the largest and best-known providers of health benefits in the U.S. Today, health insurance is a multi-billion dollar industry and healthcare expenses amount to trillions.
These industries are expected to continue to grow. With healthcare costs rising, it's increasingly important for your students to have access to a competitive health insurance plan. Academic HealthPlans (AHP) offers wellness consulting and student health plan management for schools and universities of all sizes in the U.S. Insurance is so present in our daily lives that it's hard to imagine living without it.
But for much of the colonial period, that's just what Americans did. Insurance arrived on the American scene almost at the same time that the idea of a single nation, the United States, began to form and was introduced by one of the country's founding fathers. Let's take a look at the history of insurance in the U.S. The city was haunted by fear of fires.
As in London in the 17th century, the houses of the time were almost entirely made of wood. Worse, they were built very close to each other. This was originally for security reasons, but as cities grew, developers built houses very close to each other for the same reasons they do today, to fit as many as possible on their parcels of land. Although much of Philadelphia was built with wide streets and brick or stone structures, the conflagrations were still a cause for concern.
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin and several other prominent citizens founded the Philadelphia Contribution for home insurance in the event of fire loss, following the model of a London company. The first fire insurance company in the United States, was structured as a mutual insurance company and Franklin advertised it in The Pennsylvania Gazette (of which he owned). Like modern insurers, the company sent inspectors to evaluate properties whose owners were requesting coverage and rejected those that didn't meet its standards; the rates were based on an assessment of the property's risk. The Contribution issued seven-year policies and the applications were paid from a capital reserve fund.
The Philadelphia Contribution set new standards for construction because it refused to insure properties it considered fire-hazardous. The criteria he used to evaluate buildings would one day become building codes and zoning laws. Seven years later, Franklin was also instrumental in creating the first life insurance company in the U.S. A number of religious authorities of the time were outraged by the practice of placing a dollar value on human life, but their criticism cooled when they realized that the payment of death benefits served to protect widows and orphans.
Then, the Industrial Revolution made both companies and individuals understand the need for business insurance and disability insurance. For example, in 1897, Travelers Insurance Company sold its first car insurance policy and, in 1919, its first aviation liability coverage. As modern life became increasingly complicated, new types of insurance kept emerging. With the rapid growth of insurance companies and insurance products in the late 19th century, the young industry was soon beset by fraud and dubious practices.
The scandals ranged from companies that sold policies without having the capital to pay their claims (operating instead as Ponzi schemes) to insurers that ruthlessly expelled their competitors in an attempt to create a monopoly. Many states passed laws to address the problems, but at the beginning of the 20th century, abuses were still widespread. In 1935, the Social Security Act came into effect, providing for old age assistance and grants to states for unemployment compensation. By taking some of the territory away from insurance companies, it sent a clear signal that encouraged the industry to start regulating itself out of fear of greater government participation.
The Second World War caused a wage freeze and employers, desperate to attract workers who were still in the country, began offering group life and health insurance as benefits to employees. These large policies used to be offered by companies large enough to afford them and to offer a sizeable group of insured workers. As a result, the power of the major insurers increased, starving the smallest, along with most of the night operators. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the insurance industry should be regulated by the federal government.
However, Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act in 1945, returning oversight to the state level. Regulatory control is maintained mainly at the state level to this day. Meanwhile, large insurance companies continue to grow in size, especially as they merge with each other and with other giants in the financial industry. Now, many of these companies offer a range of financial services that go far beyond insurance.
The most profound change in the U.S. In recent years, the insurance industry has been driven by the growth of the Internet. Insurance shoppers are increasingly using the Internet to purchase coverage, and as a result, insurers have changed many of their sales and underwriting practices. The global reach of the Internet has also led to new mergers between financial services companies, as they compete in what is increasingly a global market.
The teachers came together to create a program in which they would agree to pay, what would now be considered an insurance premium, to Baylor University Hospital for future medical services. .
