Medicare Vs Blue Cross Essay

developed at a university hospital in Texas and grew out of the dire conditions of the Great Depression. Blue Cross covered the cost of care when a patient was treated at a hospital. There was a need for more integration between what was going on in an outpatient and what was going on in an inpatient, thus by 1932 Blue Shield was formed. It provided doctors to subscribers when they paid monthly premiums. It was expanded to larger communities eventually to all of the United States. Although they were separate companies, in 1938 Blue Cross and Blue Shield merged offering low cost private health insurance to their clients against large outlays of cash for individual treatments and catastrophic events.

A lot of unsuccessful attempts were made

In addition to a medical coverage system for the elderly, the government also created Medicaid, a state and federally run system that provided medical coverage to low income americans. Medicaid had a stigma of class, since it insured people that were too poor to afford private insurance. This meant that taxpayers had to subsidize health care for people who could not have afforded private health insurance. Medicare however did not have a stigma of class because all you had to do is be over 65 years of age to be Medicare eligible. Medicare was later extended to cover the disabled and end-stage renal

The policies and values of the United States, whether of a patient or a provider, is of capitalism and self-determination (Jennings 2009). Patients for the most part believe that providers should be able to compete and have a distrust for the government. Most Americans don't like to give money to the government and have them decide where to put it. Many are against high taxation in the Unites Sates and agree that certain things like national defense require paying taxes for, but when it comes to healthcare majority do not support nationalized