Providers wanted to maintain and improve patient revenue; employers started seeking benefits for their employees, consumers seeking access to improved and affordable health care, and even a housing lending agency seeking a reduction in the number of foreclosures. Many new HMO groups arose as a result, examples are the Kaisers Foundation Health Plans found in 1937 as the request of Kaiser Construction Company, the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York found in 1947, home Owner’s Loan Corporation organized the Group Health Association to reduce the number of mortgage default by families who had large medical expenses.
For a little over a decades, prepaid healthcare remained present in only few communities. But around 1970 HMOs began to expand at a fast rate. During the early years of Nixon administration, Dr. Paul Ellwood, an MD from Minneapolis, was asked to create a strategy to stop or diminish the increase in the Medicare budget. This led to the development of health maintenance organizations intended to reimburse HMOs for Medicare beneficiaries’ health care though a