Costs and coverage, student health In simplest terms, insurance is protection against 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 imagine, 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 rose and more employers saw the need to provide greater benefits to their employers, the health insurance industry exploded. UnitedHealthcare was created in the 1970s and is currently the largest health insurance provider in the United States. UU. The forerunner of Aetna began as a life insurance company, which specialized 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 expenditures amount to the trillions. These industries are expected to continue to grow. With rising health care costs, it's becoming more important for your students to have access to a competitive health insurance plan.
Academic HealthPlans (AHP) provides student health services, wellness consulting, and plan administration for colleges 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, was beginning 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 the fear of fires. As in London in the 17th century, the houses of the time were made almost entirely of wood. Even worse, they were built close together.
This was originally for safety reasons, but as cities grew, developers built houses very close to each other for the same reasons they do today to place as much of it as possible on their parcels of land. Although much of Philadelphia was built with wide streets and brick or stone structures, the conflicts were still a cause for concern. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin and several other prominent citizens founded Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, 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 announced it in The Pennsylvania Gazette (of which he owned).
Like modern insurers, the company sent inspectors to evaluate properties whose owners requested coverage and rejected those that did not meet its standards; the rates were based on a property risk assessment. The Contribution issued seven-year policies and the claims were paid out of a capital reserve fund. The Philadelphia Contribution set new standards for construction because it refused to insure properties it considered fire hazards. 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 United States. Several religious authorities at the time were outraged by the practice of placing a dollar value on human life, but their criticism cooled when they realized that paying death benefits served to protect widows and orphans. The Industrial Revolution meant that both companies and individuals needed business insurance and disability insurance. For example, in 1897, Travelers Insurance Company sold its first auto insurance policy and, in 1919, its first liability coverage for aircraft.
As modern life became more complicated, new types of insurance continued to emerge. 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 (which operated, instead, as Ponzi schemes) to insurance companies 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 subsidies to states for unemployment compensation. By taking part 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 involvement. World War II 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 for employees. These large policies were usually offered by companies large enough to afford them and provide a sizeable pool of insured workers.
As a result, the power of the major insurers grew, starving the youngest, along with most operators who fly at night. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the insurance industry should be regulated at the federal level. However, Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act in 1945, returning oversight to the state level. Regulatory control remains primarily 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 financial industry giants. Now, many of these companies offer a range of financial services that go far beyond insurance. The most profound change in the United States. The insurance industry in recent years has been driven by the growth of the Internet.
Insurance buyers are increasingly turning to the Internet for 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, which compete in what is increasingly a global market. As the ancient world evolved, maritime loans emerged with rates based on favorable travel seasons. Around the year 600 BC.
C., the Greeks and Romans created the first types of life and health insurance with their benevolent societies. These societies paid attention to the families of deceased citizens. These societies continued for centuries in many different areas of the world and included funerary rituals. In the 12th century in Anatolia, a type of state insurance was introduced.
If merchants were robbed in the area, the state treasury would reimburse them for their losses. Maritime loans (foenus nauticum) were common before traditional maritime insurance in medieval times, in which an investor lent his money to a traveling merchant, and the merchant would be required to pay it back if the ship returned safely. At the end of the 17th century, London's growing importance as a commercial hub was the increased demand for maritime insurance. In the late 19th century, governments began to initiate national insurance programs against sickness and old age.
Accident insurance was made available in the late 19th century and was very similar to modern disability coverage. After destroying more than 30,000 homes, a man named Nicholas Barbon created a building insurance business. This system was soon discovered to be terribly flawed, as rival brigades often ignored burning buildings once they discovered they didn't have an insurance policy with their company. The first to insure their people were the Achaemenid monarchs, and insurance records were submitted to notaries.
In 1913, 2.3 million were insured under the unemployment benefit plan and nearly 15 million were insured with sickness benefits. .
