From company doctors to managed care : the United Mine Workers' noble experiment

The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the Fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade. Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans. "The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade. The UMWA was one of the first unions to take advantage of conditions created by World War II to bargain for employer-financed health benefits. Spurning convention, the UMWA not only retained control of health benefits but also utilized then-unorthodox managed-care principles in arranging for the care of its members. Perhaps even more remarkable, the union designed the Fund to care for a beneficiary group with extremely high demands. Initially poor and neglected, miners were encumbered by the additional health burdens of a hazardous industry. Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans."--Jacket Contents Figures, Tables, and Maps List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION. The Centrality of Health Benefits in Labor Contracts CHAPTER 1. The Early History of Health Plans for Workers CHAPTER 2. Bargaining for Benefits: The Fund and the Transformation of Industrial Relations in the Coal Industry CHAPTER 3. Designing the Fund CHAPTER 4. The Delivery of Physician Care under the Fund's Managed Care Initiatives CHAPTER 5. Hospital Care: The Miners Memorial Hospital Association CHAPTER 6.External Challenges to the Operation of the Fund CHAPTER 7. The Transformation and Dismantling of the Fund Appendix: Data Sources Notes Bibliography Index