No. of Recommendations: 2
Henry Kaiser built his own health care project while building the Bonneville dam in the Columbia Gorge because buying health care from established health plans was too expensive. After the dam was completed, he walked away from health care. The doctors he had hired were so pleased with the system they had, that they continued Kaiser Health Plan in the Pacific Northwest and it spread from there. Later the health plan was spun off from the Permanente Medical Group but with contractual obligations of one to the other.
So, Henry Kaiser had a role in the beginning of the first HMO but did not really foster it beyond his own needs to provide health care for his workers.
fd
