During the roughly four decades since the end of World War II, the health care system in the United States has experienced historically unprecedented change in three dimensions. First, new technologies have revolutionized the ways in which health care is capable of being practiced. Almost all of...

In Dallas, Texas, in 1929, Justin Ford Kimball, executive vice-president of Baylor University, originated a plan whereby Dallas school teachers paid $6 a year to the University Hospital and were extended hospital care without further charge [1, p. 5 ]. From this beginning grew Blue Cross plans,...