Originally posted by durrelllrobert
Here's how it took Kaiser 60 years to get to be
http://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/history-of-kaiser-permanente/
Kaiser Permanente evolved from industrial health care programs for construction, shipyard, and steel mill workers for the Kaiser industrial companies
during the late 1930s and 1940s. It was opened to public enrollment in October 1945.
The organization that is now Kaiser Permanente began at the height of the Great Depression with a single inventive young surgeon and a 12-bed hospital
in the middle of the Mojave Desert. When Sidney Garfield, MD, looked at the thousands of men involved in building the Colorado River Aqueduct Project,
he saw an opportunity. He borrowed money to build Contractors General Hospital; six miles from a tiny town called Desert Center, and began treating
sick and injured workers. But financing was difficult, and Dr. Garfield was having trouble getting the insurance companies to pay his bills in a
timely fashion. To compound matters, not all of the men had insurance. Dr. Garfield refused to turn away any sick or injured worker, so he often was
left with no payment at all for his services. In no time, the hospital’s expenses were far exceeding its income.
Enter Harold Hatch, an engineer-turned-insurance agent. Hatch suggested that the insurance companies pay Dr. Garfield a fixed amount per day, per
covered worker, up front. This would solve the hospital’s immediate money troubles and, at the same time, would enable Dr. Garfield to emphasize
maintaining health and safety rather than merely treating illness and injury. Thus, “prepayment” was born. For the princely sum of five cents per day,
workers were provided this new form of health coverage. For an additional five cents per day, workers could also receive coverage for non-job related
medical problems. Thousands of workers enrolled, and Dr. Garfield’s hospital became a financial success.
As the aqueduct project wound down, Dr. Garfield prepared to leave his desert hospital and start a solo practice in Los Angeles. But he got a call
from another industrialist. This time, the problem was providing health care to 6,500 workers and their families at the largest construction site in
history—the Grand Coulee Dam. Excited by the possibilities, Dr. Garfield put his solo practice plans on hold. He turned the existing run-down hospital
into a state-of-the-art treatment facility and recruited a team of doctors to work in a “prepaid group practice.” The method again was a smashing
success and a big hit with the workers and their families. But as the dam neared completion in 1941, it seemed once again that the grand experiment
was reaching an end.
Once again, however, history intervened. America’s entry into World War II brought tens of thousands of workers—many of who were inexperienced and in
poor health already—pouring into the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, Calif., to meet the nation’s demand for big Liberty Ships, aircraft carriers, and
the like. Now, Henry J. Kaiser had the problem: How to provide health care for this teeming mass of 30,000? Kaiser was convinced that Dr. Garfield
could solve his problem, but it took some special wrangling—the surgeon was already scheduled to enter active duty with his U.S. Army Reserve unit in
just a few weeks. But at Kaiser’s request, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released Dr. Garfield from his military obligation specifically so he could
organize and run a prepaid group practice for the workers at the Richmond shipyards. And so, Dr. Garfield and his innovative health care delivery
system came to the San Francisco Bay Area, and formed the association with Kaiser that would imbed itself in the organization and continue until the
present day. |
IMO
Think of all
the money people would save
