The tale of Blue Cross Blue Shield – American Healthcare Chronicles

I recently started building products focused on healthcare affordability in the US. As I was ramping up on a new space, the biggest question that sparked my curiosity was: how did we get here? This question is the inspiration for this weekly series chronicling the decisions, accidents, and breakthroughs that built the US healthcare system Over the last several editions, we’ve traced how the US healthcare system accumulated its shape — a wartime wage freeze created employer-sponsored insurance, a tax ruling made it permanent, Medicare and Medicaid covered those the employer system left behind, and EMTALA turned every emergency room into a safety net for everyone else. Each decision solved an immediate problem and created new ones. Running alongside all of it was an insurance model that was underneath all of it. Today’s story is about that. In 1929, a hospital administrator in Dallas noticed something in the unpaid bills piling up on his desk. A disproportionate number belonged to…