Online Individual/Family Health &Dental Applications   

 WA State

When life was simpler and people were more relaxed, everyone knew their roles and what was expected.  Doctors were the experts and the patients  were the receivers of their expertise.   Doctors services were covered by health insurance WA state, and in the other 49 states  however the health insurance covered only services in the hospital and surgical services but not on an outpatient basis. Over time, more services were covered both inpatient and outpatient.  In an age of specialization, and high technology, more of these services were provided by technicians, paraprofessionals, and nurse practitioners

As the population became older and people lived longer, and as the cost of staying in hospitals skyrocketed, new benefits were added to provide for services to meet seniors' needs.  Health insurance Benefits in Wa state  were added to cover people in nursing homes, adult family home settings and  even in the senior citizen's own home. where often the caregivers came from outside the normal medical community and were more like trained personal caregivers and social workers.   

While the popularity of employer based health insurance in WA state grew,
Congress passed laws to offer tax write offs uniquely for employers and employees  for the cost of health insurance coverage.  In the beginning, the health insurance companies  determined the coverage, demanded the price and hardly marketed the stuff rather acted unilaterally.   This is much as it is today with the small group marketplace.  back in the early days, they would change the premiums based on claims data and utilization rates and made sure that revenues covered the costs. As time went along and as premiums increased, employers wanted more information about the cost of their plans and also wanted better coverage and more diverse benefits.  Employers wanted to be able to have some control over the health insurance benefits that they offered and began shopping among carriers to squeeze out the best price for their plans.

By the 1970's and 1980's, larger employers  especially started self insuring in large numbers so that they would have almost complete control over the healthcare benefits of their plans.  Instead of passing the risk onto an insurance company, they used them and other third party administrators to do just that to administrate their plans.  Later as health maintenance organizations and other types of managed care plans came into existence, employers moved back to the sponsor of such plans to bear the risk as well as handle the financial management.  Today, the largest number of managed care plans are sponsored by insurance companies including the  Blue  Crosses and the Blue Shields of the world. s

Big labor, once antagonistic to employer sponsored group insurance, became great promoters of these types of health insurance WA state and elsewhere.  They saw how these employer plans offered great benefits to their union families and negotiated for more and better benefits.  In fact, big labor has been the biggest advocate for more and better benefits since the beginning. Even today, labor unions exert great weight with the WA state legislature over the laws that they legislate and the direction of health insurance.  Big labor is all about increasing taxes and payments from  the wealthy to pay for the  little guy's lunch and maybe his health insurance in  WA state too.